Left: Lumumba Sayers Sr. (Adams County Sheriff's Office). Right: Lumumba Sayers Jr. (Obituary).
A onetime anti-gun activist in Colorado will spend several decades behind bars for killing a man to avenge the shooting death of his son.
In April, Lumumba Sayers Sr., 47, was convicted by a jury of his peers in Adams County on one count each of murder in the second degree, tampering with physical evidence, and attempting to commit tampering over the August 2024 death of 28-year-old Malcolm Watson.
On Friday, the defendant was sentenced by Adams County District Court Judge Jeffrey Ruff to 51 years in prison. The court meted out 48 years for the murder conviction and 1½ years for each tampering conviction, according to a press release issued by the Adams and Broomfield Counties District Attorney's Office.
"Mr. Sayers' actions directly undermined the work he claimed to dedicate his life to," District Attorney Brian Mason said in a statement. "A man who presented himself as a mentor to young people and an advocate for nonviolence chose to commit the very act he said he stood against."
The underlying incident occurred on Aug. 10, 2024, at a birthday party.
But the locus of the violence dates back almost a full year before.
Lumumba Sayers Jr., 23, worked with his father in various prominent ways. They were both mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters who provided community outreach to end the scourge of youth violence. On Aug. 19, 2023, the young fighter known in the ring as "Heavy Hands" was shot and killed in Denver's Five Points neighborhood along with a friend. Two other victims were wounded in that incident dubbed a massacre.
Three hundred fifty-six days later, the elder was out for revenge.
At the birthday party, the defendant shot and killed a friend of the man police once believed was the prime suspect in — and once arrested for — the Five Points shooting. Sayers Sr. was originally arrested and charged with counts of first-degree murder and felony menacing.
On the day in question, Watson was hosting his child's birthday pool party. It was a Saturday afternoon at Pioneer Park in Commerce City, a northeastern suburb of Denver. Watson was killed in front of his guests.
"Mr. Sayers murdered the father of a young boy at that boy's fifth birthday party, an unconscionable and brutal act of violence," the district attorney went on. "This is particularly heartbreaking because Mr. Sayers had devoted part of his career to advancing the message of anti-violence. Justice is carried out in courtrooms, not in parking lots in front of children by someone seeking revenge."
As the victim was leaving the party at around 5 p.m., a man walked up to him, pulled out a gun, and shot him "in the head at close range," witnesses told law enforcement, according to an arrest affidavit for Sayers Sr. obtained by Denver-based NBC affiliate KUSA.
Investigators later found four spent shell casings near Watson's body, according to CBS News. He suffered three gunshot wounds.
After Watson was dead, Sayers Sr. returned to his vehicle and retrieved a second gun. Then, witnesses said, the killer tried to shoot again but was unable to do so, because the second gun had jammed. Next, he planted the second gun underneath Watson's body, video showed.
After Watson fell, someone shouted: "I got you, mother f—."
Revenge was mentioned by those in attendance, police said.
"Witnesses had stated the [shooter's son] had been murdered about a year ago by a friend of the deceased," the affidavit reads. "[T]his murder was probably in retaliation or revenge."
Another witness cited by police put the violence in blunt terms, saying the defendant "killed her baby's daddy on the baby's birthday."
The victim's sister told the TV station that Watson's 5-year-old son was the birthday boy whose party ended in tragedy.
She dismissed the shooter's would-be motive as inane.
"How is it a revenge killing if my brother isn't the one who had anything to do with it?" Watson's sister asked out loud.
During the trial, Sayers took the stand and testified in his own defense that an unidentified person shot Watson and fled the scene, and that he was only attempting to retrieve his $15,000 gold necklace that somehow ended up near the victim's body. Prosecutors, in turn, argued that no evidence supported those claims.
After a two-week trial, the jury sided with the state.
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