Lumumba Sayers Sr., who long presented himself as a community leader steering kids away from a life of crime, was found guilty Monday of second-degree murder in a 2024 shooting at a crowded water park in Commerce City.
Prosecutors argued Sayers was obsessed with exacting revenge for his own son’s murder a year earlier, and believed Malcolm Watson, the victim, was involved. On Aug. 10, 2024, Sayers left an anti-violence event, drove to a birthday party at the Paradice Island water park, walked up to Watson and shot him multiple times.
There is no video of the shooting, but multiple eyewitnesses reported that Sayers was the shooter, and prosecutors said video of the aftermath shows Sayers trying to plant a gun on Watson as he lay bleeding in the parking lot.
Sayers was also found guilty on two additional counts, one each of tampering with physical evidence, and attempted tampering with physical evidence. Sayers was found not guilty of menacing.
The state had sought to convict Sayers of first-degree murder. But even the conviction on the lesser charge closes a chapter on a cycle of gun violence that left three men dead over the course of a year, and a prominent anti-violence activist is now facing decades in prison.
The judge set sentencing for July, after conclusion of a pre-sentence investigation.
Sayers, a former mixed martial arts fighter, was the founder of Heavy Hands, Heavy Hearts, a Denver nonprofit paid by the city and state to help youth. Sayers received almost half a million dollars in Denver tax funds for his “Glovez Up, Gunz Down Movement program,” according to a 2022 grant application. A CPR News investigation found that Sayers attempted to seal his criminal record in order to qualify for government grants.
His son Sayers Jr. worked with his father in the nonprofit. At around 4 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2023, Sayers Jr. was killed in a chaotic gun battle in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. Prosecutors charged Tyrell Braxton with the shooting, but later dismissed the case. Braxton was convicted of being a felon in possession of ammunition in federal court in connection with the shooting and sentenced to 194 months in prison.
Over the next year, witnesses reported that Sayers Sr. had become “crazy” over his son’s killing, blaming people he associated with gangs on Denver’s east side. “They all got to die. They all got to die. The whole East Side,” one witness recalled Sayers saying.
His defense attorneys acknowledged that Sayers began carrying a firearm for his protection, related to the work he was doing as an anti-gang activist. But they insisted he was only a bystander to the shooting. They argued that Sayers wasn’t planting a gun on Watson, but putting his own gun down before police arrived. The gun used to kill Watson was never recovered.
Sayers’ attorneys said he decided to stop by Paradice Island, not to kill Watson, but because he had family and friends he wanted to see at the water park.
The jury deliberated for almost two days after hearing testimony for two weeks.
