Posted on April 15, 2010

Murdered Grad Student Was Hunted, Gang Members Say

Jeffrey Wolf, KUSA-TV (Denver), April 15, 2010

A graduate student was murdered in Centennial last fall by a juvenile gang member who followed him to try and get money, 9Wants to Know has learned from search warrants which detail first-hand accounts of the murder by other gang members.

Despite the first-hand reports and admissions from the gang members, no one has been arrested for Andrew Graham’s murder in Centennial last November.

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The 23-year-old graduate student was targeted because the Denver Crips gang wanted to rob a “white” person and Graham “looked like he might have money,” according to the affidavits.

Graham was gunned down in the early morning of Nov. 6, 2009 and discovered in the front yard of a home in a neighborhood near the Park Meadows Mall in Centennial. He was going home after looking for a place to live in Boulder where he had just been handpicked by his professors to take part in a new master’s program for mathematical engineering at the University of Colorado.

In a polygraph interview with Denver Police on Dec. 9, gang member Clarissa Lockhart said she and four other gang members followed Graham after he got off the light rail and went down a busy street for two blocks.

Lockhart said gang member Allen Ford spoke to Graham. Lockhart says another gang member nicknamed “Baby Low” then shot and killed Graham.

Another gang member, who is a minor, told investigators he was responsible, directly or indirectly, for providing weapons to Baby Low and said Baby Low told him he was the shooter, according to the affidavits.

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9Wants to Know has learned some of the gang members involved in Graham’s murder were part of the racially-motivated violent attacks on white people in Lower Downtown Denver and along the 16th Street Mall last summer, according to the affidavits.

Denver Metro Gang Task Force members say the Crips were targeting white individuals for robberies for about six months before Graham’s death. Police say the gang was responsible for robbing, assaulting and attacking as many as 26 people during that time.

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Denver Police arrested Lockhart and Ford later on Nov. 19 in connection with the robberies and assaults. That was 13 days after Graham’s murder.

9Wants to Know asked the Denver Police chief, the Denver District Attorney’s office and the Arapahoe County District Attorney to comment on the delay in arresting and charging at least two of the gang members in the initial attacks, which may have prevented Graham’s murder.

All agencies declined to comment.

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