No criminal charges in September shooting death of football player

No criminal charges will be filed in the shooting death of a Colorado Mesa University football player after about 10 months of investigation.

Brett Ojiyi was shot Sept. 22 inside a Grand Junction residence at 1171 Main St., according to the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office. He died at the scene.

District Attorney Daniel P. Rubinstein on Thursday posted a letter to Grand Junction police Detective Ed Prescott detailing reasons why prosecutors will not level charges in the case, as reported by The Daily Sentinel.

Several people were inside the multilevel home at the time of the shooting. Two, Gary Scott, 21, and Virnel Moon, 23, were in the living room with Ojiyi when the shooting occurred.

Scott gave investigators varying accounts of what had happened, according to the letter, including stating he was outside at the time of the shooting.

The night after the shooting, Scott went to the police department and met with Prescott, telling the detective that Ojiyi was handing a gun to him when the weapon discharged. “I reached out with my right hand, and it popped,” Scott told Prescott, according to the letter.

The gun, a silver .25-caliber semiautomatic Raven Arms, had been in Ojiyi’s possession around the time of the shooting, according to witnesses. The gun is seen in Ojiyi’s possession in a video file on his cellphone. The night of the shooting, he was also in possession of a black .45caliber handgun.

Ojiyi had been riding on a Hover board dancing to music with the silver gun in one hand and the black gun in his other hand in the living room as Scott and Moon played a football video game nearby on a couch.

Both guns were recovered by investigators after the shooting. Both had been stashed in a laundry basket. Both guns had been reported stolen, investigators later determined.

As part of his statements to police, Scott said he had smoked 12 to 15 marijuana “blunts” during the course of the day prior to the shooting. The autopsy report on Ojiyi showed that he had marijuana in his system.

Nine people, including Ojiyi, had been in the home at the time of the shooting. “There was no indication of an argument, fight, disagreement or other ascertainable motive for anyone to have intentionally or knowingly shot Brett O jiyi,” the letter said.

Rubinstein, in the letter, said he considered multiple charges against Scott, including reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. He also considered charges of attempting to influence a public servant and tampering with evidence because of the multiple varying accounts and for hiding the gun in a laundry basket.

In relation to the manslaughter and homicide charge, Rubinstein wrote: “I can not prove who was responsible for the discharge of the gun.”