Laramie County’s top prosecutor declined Monday to prosecute a man who shot his downstairs neighbor’s son and killed him March 30.
The shooting was an act of self-defense, Laramie County District Attorney Sylvia Hackl told Cowboy State Daily on Monday, adding that she’s drafting a letter to the Cheyenne chief of police announcing her decision.
A man living upstairs in the 1700 block of Oxford Drive in Cheyenne heard a woman screaming from a floor below him the night of March 30, Hackl related from the Cheyenne Police Department’s investigation of the incident.
The man armed himself with a handgun and told his wife to call 911. He then went downstairs to confront the man in the apartment, 38-year-old Derrick Montoya.
Montoya was in a domestic argument with his mother, Hackl said.
The neighbor confronted Montoya in the hallway outside the apartment of Montoya’s mother. Montoya then went upstairs and away from the apartment.
‘Rushed Him’
But Montoya came back down, said Hackl. By then the neighbor was in the stairwell.
“(The neighbor) was down in that hallway, stairwell entry … when Mr. Montoya came back and rushed him,” said Hackl.
Hackl said she could not recall if Montoya was armed, but that Cheyenne Police Department would know.
The agency did not immediately return a Monday voicemail request for comment.
But Montoya was “heavily intoxicated” with alcohol, and charged the neighbor in a “rapid, aggressive manner” in close proximity in the stairwell, Hackl said.
“And the whole thing is really unfortunate,” added Hackl. “It’s just one of those situations where you wish no one involved had been imbibing heavily.”
Montoya’s mother did not cooperate with the investigation, leaving out details about her status before and during the incident, said the prosecutor.
Other people were nearby, but no one else reported injuries, according to an early Cheyenne Police Department statement on the matter.
A Little Law
Wyoming’s self-defense laws say that a person is justified in killing another if he acted in a way that a reasonable person would act in the same circumstances, to address an honest belief that he or another person is in danger of imminent death or serious bodily injury.
Hackl said her finding defers to this statute.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
