FORT COLLINS — In a leafy neighborhood shared by college students and families just south of Colorado State University, Jordan Hancock sat in the back of an SUV full of his friends.
The 19-year-old son of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was home from an Atlanta-area college on a break Sept. 28, and the group was leaving its second party of the night when shots rang out. Just an arm’s length away from Hancock in the second row of the vehicle, Jalen Robinson, 19, lay slumped, arms extended, out the back window of the SUV.
Robinson had been shot in the back of the head and was clinging to life, a bullet lodged in his forehead.
“You shot him … ,” a witness heard someone inside the vehicle say amid a flurry of expletives that were yelled in the SUV before it sped off.
Interviews with friends, witnesses and police revealed an alcohol-fueled night among friends that began at a popular Fort Collins bar, led to a college after-party and ended at the Medical Center of the Rockies. Police arrested Robinson’s best friend, Eddie Johnson, 19, also of Denver, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the SUV.
Friends called the shooting a “drunk mistake” that left Robinson nearly paralyzed and Johnson sitting in a jail cell.
When police interviewed Jordan Hancock, Johnson and others inside the SUV that morning, they misled investigators, telling them the shot was fired from outside the vehicle and that no one inside the SUV had a gun, according to court records.
“We know we didn’t get the whole story from anyone involved that night,” said Deputy Chief Cory Christensen.
Johnson has been charged with second-degree assault with a deadly weapon. Clad in a blue suit, he declined to comment through his lawyer at a Larimer County court hearing Wednesday, when a judge barred him from contact with Robinson.
Police say they never located the weapon in the shooting — allegedly wrapped in a blue bandana and tossed from the speeding vehicle into a nearby yard. But investigators say they found a box of .25-caliber ammunition in the SUV that matched the slug removed from Robinson’s brain. Police linked the gun to Johnson from witness statements.
Jordan Hancock, reached by cellphone last month, refused to answer a reporter’s questions before hanging up. A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office declined to make Jordan Hancock available for an interview and declined to comment for this story.
Robinson, the father of a 4-month-old girl, is recovering at Craig Hospital in Englewood, where his girlfriend says he is battling severe brain injuries. Images posted on Facebook after the shooting showed Robinson lying in a hospital bed, tubes coming out of his body. In recent days, Robinson’s father has posted photos of his injured son wearing a helmet, donning a half-cocked smile.
Robinson is also relearning how to talk. A video posted on Facebook by his father shows him struggling to string words into a sentence.
The wounded man’s family is trying to crowdfund his recovery, so far raising about $2,200 of the $25,000 they are seeking for medical and rehabilitation bills.
Police say an investigation into the shooting is active and ongoing.
On the night of the shooting, Hancock and his friends headed north to Fort Collins to attend an event hosted by Determined Nation Magazine— a youth publication— called the “All White Party,” where attendees wore white outfits.
At Washington’s Bar and Grill, the young men partied with dozens in the two-story, western-themed watering hole, police and witnesses said. Organizers of the 18-and-up event say they don’t remember Hancock, Robinson or Johnson at the party but are well aware of what happened after.
Event attendees began talking about locations of a possible early-morning, unofficial after-party. Soon after, a group of roughly 100 headed to a blue house in the 2800 block of Eagle Drive that neighbors say is rented by a group of CSU students. Residents say large weekend bashes aren’t unusual in the neighborhood.
A witness told police Johnson was walking around the party — and before at the bar — with a gun in his waistband.
Hancock, Robinson and Johnson were leaving the after-party a few hours later with several other men in an SUV when a verbal altercation began. Those in the vehicle were trading gang slurs associated with the Crips and Bloods with those outside the car, witnesses told police.
Investigators have since said they don’t believe gang affiliation played a factor in the shooting. The mayor’s office and friends of the young men say none are members of a gang.
At about 3 a.m., witnesses saw and heard a shot fired into the air. Neighbors who heard the gun awoke and went to their windows to investigate and started calling police.
Witnesses say Robinson leaned out the window as the SUV moved away from the party, his right hand in the air waving a bottle of peach liquor, and yelled “And that’s on Crips cuz!”
Witnesses say that from within the car they saw a “spark” on the back of Robinson’s shirt. Robinson fell forward and slumped motionless out the window.
“We heard the shots and then saw a big group of kids just running,” said Kirsten Black, who lives with her husband and five sons down the street from where the shooting happened. “I heard people yell, ‘He has a gun!’ “
The SUV’s driver stopped, got out of the vehicle and returned the critically wounded man to the back seat before speeding off to the hospital, witnesses told police.
“They were drunk,” Robinson’s girlfriend said last month. “They were being dumb.”
Johnson is next due in court Thursday. Police declined to say if Hancock or anyone else involved in the shooting could face charges.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
