Jurors convicted a Colorado anti-violence advocate of murder Monday in the fatal shooting of a 28-year-old father at his son’s birthday party two years ago.
Lumumba Sayers Sr., 47, was found guilty of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence and attempted tampering with evidence. He was acquitted of menacing.
Prosecutors had charged Sayers with first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life prison sentence. But the jury convicted him of the lesser charge of second-degree murder, which is typically punished with between 16 and 48 years in prison.
His sentencing is set for July 24 in Adams County District Court.
Jurors found Sayers Sr. shot and killed 28-year-old Malcolm Watson at a pool party for Watson’s son in Commerce City’s Pioneer Park on Aug. 10, 2024. Prosecutors alleged Sayers Sr. killed Watson to avenge the death of his son, Lumumba Sayers Jr. — who was killed in a shootout in Five Points in 2023 — because Sayers Sr. believed Watson was connected to his son’s death.
Jurors received the case late Thursday after a nearly two-week trial and began Friday’s deliberations at 9 a.m. They reached a verdict around 12:40 p.m. Monday. In court Monday, Sayers Sr. sat with his hands folded in front of his face, palms together, after the verdict was read.
Sayers Sr., who ran the , an anti-violence organization in Aurora, attended an event sponsored by Denver nonprofit immediately before the killing. He drove from the anti-violence rally in Montbello to Pioneer Park, where surveillance video showed him park and walk toward Watson. The man was shot and killed seconds later, just out of the video’s frame.
Multiple witnesses said Sayers Sr. walked up to Watson, greeted him and then shot him at close range. Sayers Sr. said he greeted Watson, heard a second person greet Watson, and then heard gunshots. His defense at trial was that another man who was present that day killed Watson.
Sayers Sr. was armed with an unregistered handgun, which he is seen on video brandishing immediately after the killing. He told jurors that he carried the gun in his pocket for protection — despite not having a concealed carry permit — and that he pulled the weapon after he heard the shots. His gun was not the weapon used to kill Watson.
Prosecutors alleged the murder weapon was an untraceable 3-D printed or kit-built “ghost gun” that was never found. They theorized that Sayers Sr. gave the gun to the other man, who then left the scene. Surveillance video shows the man running up to Sayers Sr. after the shooting, having a brief conversation with Sayers Sr. at his vehicle and then running away carrying what appears to be a covered-up object, testimony revealed.
During the trial, Sayer Sr.’s defense attorney, Megan Downing, focused on differences in the witnesses’ accounts and sought to show the physical evidence in the case did not line up with their descriptions. She suggested that the witnesses subconsciously decided Sayers Sr. must have shot Watson in an attempt to make sense of the situation, but suggested they did not actually see what they testified they saw.
The trial brought some surprise testimony, with both prosecution and defense witnesses offering information for the first time on the stand and denying that they made earlier statements to investigators.
The supposed connection between Watson and the murder of Lumumba Sayers Jr. was explored several times in testimony but was consistently poorly defined, with witnesses suggesting that talk on the streets tied another man to the killing, and that Watson was that man’s cousin. Prosecutors said that Sayers Sr. was interested in revenge on the entire “East Side” and had been obsessed with his son’s killing.
Sayers Jr., 23, was killed in 2023 in a shootout in Denver’s Five Points that involved at least eight shooters. The exchange of gunfire at 28th and Welton streets on Aug. 19, 2023, killed both Sayers Jr. and 25-year-old Gulian Musiwa. Two women — Sayer Sr.’s daughter and the mother of Watson’s children — were also wounded in the 2023 attack. Both women witnessed Watson’s killing a year later.
