'Had issues with him': Disgruntled co-worker went to colleague's home after being fired to confront him and shot the man's wife dead after she came to the front door first

Background: News footage of the apartment in Denver, Colo., where Kelsey Roberts-Gariety was killed (KUSA). Inset (left): Kelsey Roberts-Gariety (Abbott Funeral Services). Inset (right): Ernest Cunningham (Denver Police Department).

A Colorado man who went to his former co-worker's home to confront him and shot his wife dead will spend decades in prison.

Ernest Cunningham, 53, was found guilty in December 2025 of second-degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Kelsey Roberts-Gariety. On June 29, 2024, Cunningham went to the apartment in Denver where Roberts-Gariety lived with her husband, who worked with Cunningham until the latter man was fired. Cunningham went to confront the young woman's husband, but when she opened the door instead, he gunned her down.

According to an arrest affidavit obtained by The Denver Post, Roberts-Gariety's husband told police after his wife's death that Cunningham "knew where they lived and had issues with him." The husband told police that Cunningham did drugs while he was on the job. After Cunningham was fired, he turned his anger toward Roberts-Gariety's husband and repeatedly called and threatened him.

Police said another resident in the apartment building where Roberts-Gariety and her husband lived heard a gunshot on the afternoon of the murder and the sound of someone running away. A second resident took a video of Cunningham leaving the building in his car, which police were able to use to track him down and arrest him hours later. Surveillance video also caught Cunningham's car leaving the building moments after the shooting.

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Cunningham, who was out on parole after serving time for a burglary conviction when he murdered Roberts-Gariety, was sentenced on Feb. 27 to 42 years in prison. Roberts-Gariety's sister, Kylie Al-Nubu'at, told local NBC affiliate KUSA that she knew anything more than 20 years was "basically a life sentence" for Cunningham. She added, "He took my sister's life. We're serving a life sentence of grief, so now I feel like justice has been served."