Former Strikeforce and BKFC fighter Lumumba Sayers Sr. was arrested and charged with murder after an alleged revenge killing last weekend at Pioneer Park in Commerce City, Colorado.
According to a report from Denver7, the victim, 28-year-old Malcolm Watson, was shot multiple times while attending a child’s birthday party Saturday evening. He was pronounced dead at the scene with three gunshot wounds. Sayers Sr. was later taken into custody after an eyewitness said she saw the suspect “walk up and shoot the victim in the head at close range.”
Another witness told police that Sayers Sr. had “killed her baby’s daddy on the baby’s birthday,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Watson was connected to last year’s shooting death of Sayers’ son, Lumumba Sayers Jr., a 2-0 featherweight fighter with a pair of appearances for Colorado Combat Club in Pueblo.
Sayers Jr. and another man were killed in a quadruple shooting on August 19, 2023.
https://x.com/costreetnews/status/1692985439911580038
The suspect in that case, Tyrell Braxton, was arrested a month later and charged with murder. However, records show that the murder case has since been dismissed. Watson and Braxton were acquainted according to Denver7’s report, though the arrest affidavit does not detail the relationship between them.
“This murder was probably in retaliation or revenge” for Sayers Jr.’s death a year ago, according to a witness account cited in the arrest affidavit.
Lumumba Sayers Sr. and His Son Were Active Anti-Gun Activists
Both Sayers Jr. and his father were anti-gun activists and established the non-profit organization Glovez Up, Gunz Down to promote non-violence in their community.
“He was stopping a lot of the violence here in the community,” Sayers Sr. told the news outlet in the wake of his son’s death. “Putting on boxing matches and stuff and showing these kids that there’s a different way.”
Speaking with Denver7, a local community leader suggested that Sayers Sr. is still “in a dark place” regarding the death of his son and had not sought the help he needed to properly cope with the loss.
“When a person goes through something like this, they need ongoing support in the grief process, the mourning does not go away,” said Topazz McBride, who owns the Aurora resource center Rediscovery Through Wellness. “People have their own lives, and so people begin to move back to their own sense of normalcy, which didn’t necessarily happen with Lumumba.”
“He was so close to his son, he grieved in a different way because of how he’s been available to community and to other families who’ve lost children to gun violence.”
Sayers Sr. is being held on $1 million bond pending a court hearing on Thursday for first-degree murder and felony menacing charges.
