The people who chased and shot at former Denver Broncos player Josh Reynolds and his two friends last year mistook the trio for people who’d used counterfeit money to purchase $250,000 worth of cocaine in an earlier drug deal, according to court records.
The newly unsealed court filings explain why as many as a dozen conspirators worked together to surveil, pursue and shoot at Reynolds and his friends during a miles-long car chase through Denver on Oct. 18 that prosecutors previously called a “calculated and carefully coordinated assassination attempt.”
Reynolds, who now plays for the New York Jets, was shot in his left leg and the back of his head. One of his friends, at the time a Colorado professional rugby player, was shot in the back. A second friend was wounded by shattered glass but was not shot.
The suspects wrongly believed Reynolds and his friends ripped them off in the cocaine deal — but, in fact, the trio had nothing to do with the situation, police say.
The Denver Post obtained the previously sealed records after one of the participants in the shooting, Burr Charlesworth, 42, was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison. Charlesworth drove one of the vehicles used in the shooting and was convicted of felony assault.
Charlesworth was the first of seven adult defendants arrested on attempted-murder charges in the attack to plead guilty and be sentenced. A juvenile was also charged in the shooting and an eighth adult suspect remains at large.
The defendants targeted Reynolds’ group after unidentified people used $250,000 in fake money to buy cocaine, according to the records.
One probable cause statement in the case describes a drug deal on Oct. 16 — two days before the shooting — in which several people met at a Best Western hotel in Denver’s River North neighborhood. The next day, cleaning staff found $37,000 in “movie currency” in the room, along with a money counter and “small amounts of white powder.”
It was not immediately clear Friday whether that drug deal was the cocaine deal gone wrong or a separate transaction.
But two days later, at least two people who attended the drug deal at the RiNo hotel joined with others in the attack on Reynolds, prosecutors allege. A witness said Charlesworth told him he’d “found the two males who provided the fake money,” according to an arrest affidavit. Charlesworth told police the plan was to find the people involved in a bad drug deal and “(expletive) them up.”
It was not clear from court records why the attackers mistook Reynolds and his friends for the scammers.
On the night of the shooting, the suspects sent two people inside Shotgun Willie’s, a strip club in Glendale, to watch Reynolds and his two friends as they spent time in the club. Reynolds and his friends left the club around 2:45 a.m., with Reynolds driving a Ford Bronco, court records show.
The suspects followed the trio in as many as four vehicles, then started shooting. The group chased Reynolds and his friends on Colorado Boulevard, Interstate 25, East Hampden Avenue and back onto I-25. Dozens of rounds were fired into the Ford Bronco, prosecutors have said.
Around 3:10 a.m. near I-25 and East Belleview Avenue, Reynolds and his companions abandoned the Ford Bronco — which was disabled by gunfire — on the side of the interstate and ran.
All three called 911 minutes later near South Quebec Street and Union Avenue, and were eventually met by police.
One of the suspects took a video of the shooting “and sent it to their ‘general’ to prove the incident had been carried out,” according to an arrest affidavit.
Charlesworth on Thursday said that he has no memory of half of the shooting and claimed he “came to” as he was driving on the highway, saying he likely blacked out from drug use and stress. He blamed addiction for his actions and said he never intended to carry out violence.
“I take responsibility for my actions that evening,” he said. “I am not a violent person. I have made some terrible mistakes, including that night.”
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