Attorneys asked a jury in Arapahoe County on Tuesday to consider whether a 24-year-old man acted recklessly or reasonably when he shot two people while aiming at a Jeep that was driven into a crowd of protesters in Aurora during the summer of 2020.
The prosecution and defense staked out opposite stances during opening statements in the trial for Samuel Young, who is charged with four counts of attempted reckless manslaughter, two counts of assault and one charge of illegally firing a gun in connection with the July 25, 2020, incident.
Public defender Jason Kosloski told jurors Young was trying to protect people when he fired; Tom Byrnes, assistant district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, said Young never should have pulled the trigger.
The shooting happened during a large protest against police violence in Aurora, after the demonstrators walked onto Interstate 225 and blocked the highway. A Jeep driver on the interstate drove through the crowd of several hundred people despite attempts to stop him, sending pedestrians scrambling to get out of the way.
Young fired five shots, hitting the Jeep twice but also wounding a protester in the leg and grazing another man’s head. A woman who leaped from the highway in the panic also broke her leg.
Byrnes argued during his opening statement that Young had no legitimate reason to shoot at the Jeep and should never have opened fire in the middle of a dense crowd. He said most of Young’s shots were fired after the Jeep passed by him, and suggested no protesters were endangered by the driver.
“Those decisions (Young) made to pull his gun, to fire at the Jeep under those circumstances, was not justified by any reasonable or legitimate claim that he was defending himself or other people,” Byrnes said.
Kosloski countered that Young did not intend to hurt or kill anyone when he fired the shots, but, rather, hoped to keep people safe, and emphasized that the Jeep driver bypassed several attempts to keep him off the highway before he approached the crowd that day.
“This is a case about Samuel Young’s split-second reaction to a 3,000-pound metal missile hurtling toward dozens of human beings,” Kosloski said. “Samuel Young reasonably believed every single person at the front of that protest was in mortal danger.”
The Jeep driver did not hit any pedestrians and never came “within 10 feet” of hitting anyone, Byrnes said. Kosloski pointed out the driver was going about 50 mph as he moved through the crowd, and showed video of protesters running to get out of the way.
The driver, who pulled over after the incident and spoke with police, was not criminally charged; prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to show he acted recklessly or with the specific intent to endanger protesters.
Byrnes portrayed the driver as unaware of what he was getting into when he drove back onto Interstate 225 that day. He’d been earlier diverted by police who were blocking the interstate behind the protesters, but found an on-ramp not blocked by officers that he used to re-enter the highway. The on-ramp was guarded by protesters, but the Jeep driver hopped a curb to go around their blockade, Kosloski said, adding that someone in the Jeep flipped protesters off as they passed.
“This isn’t a case about whether or not you agree with the protests or you think this was the right thing for them to do,” he said. “This case is bout what Samuel Young saw and heard and felt on that freeway.”
Young faces years in prison if convicted on all counts.
The trial is scheduled to last through the end of March and continues with testimony Wednesday in Arapahoe County District Court.
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