Student charged in Colorado campus deaths had previously threatened one of the victims
DENVER — A college student accused of killing his roommate and another person at a Colorado dorm room this month told his roommate a month earlier that he would “kill him” if he were asked to take out the trash again, according to a court document released Friday.
The dispute in January was reported to campus police and housing officials but there are no indications that university officials made any attempts to remove the suspect from the room despite multiple reports about conflicts, including the threat.
Spokespeople at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs did not immediately respond to voicemails and emails from the Associated Press seeking comment about how the school responded to the Jan. 9 complaints.
The new details about the shooting came from an arrest affidavit that was unsealed by a judge after charges against the suspect, Nicholas Jordan, were announced during a court hearing Friday.
Jordan, 25, is accused in the Feb. 16 killing of his roommate, Samuel Knopp, 24, and Celie Rain Montgomery, 26, in a dorm room at the university.
The defendant in a 2021 mass shooting that killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Jordan’s lawyer, Nick Rogers, objected to the release of the document, in part because he said his client — a junior studying accounting — would continue to be “prosecuted in the media.” He did not address the allegations against Jordan during the hearing and tried unsuccessfully to have Jordan released from jail without paying any bail.
Besides the trash incident, a third roommate reported that he and Knopp had reported Jordan’s living conditions and marijuana smoking multiple times, the document said. Jordan filed a request to withdraw from the university about 14 hours before the fatal shootings.
The warrant for Jordan’s arrest was issued on the first day of the investigation, but the fact that he was a suspect was not revealed until he was arrested Monday in a residential area of Colorado Springs, about 3 miles from campus.
In addition to a gun that prosecutors have said was found in Jordan’s car, authorities recently learned that he also had a fully loaded AK-47, Robert Willett of the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office told Judge David Shakes. Jordan had a temporary job and was in the process of withdrawing from the university, Willett said.
According to police, the bodies of Knopp and Montgomery were found after shots were fired at around 6 a.m. Friday in Crestone House, a dorm in a complex that offers apartment-style living for undergraduates and graduate students. A lockdown across campus lasted for about 90 minutes before being scaled back to just the complex.
On Friday, police said the deaths appeared to be an “isolated incident” involving people who knew each other rather than a random attack. They said there was no “ongoing threat to the community.”
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