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19-year-old pleads guilty to two homicides

Jayque Owens Arrest Photo

A 19-year-old man received a 58-year prison sentence for killing two people a few days apart in July 2020 in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood.

Prosecutors charged Jayque Owens — who was 16 at the time of the homicides of Yuan’Yae Long and Kalani Hayter — as an adult.

Owens pleaded guilty in February to two charges of second-degree murder. He was accused of shooting into a car close to midnight on July 5, 2020, in the parking lot of a liquor store on Peoria Street. The shooting killed Long, 23, and injured a woman in the car. Two other passengers were not injured.

According to an arrest affidavit for Owens, surveillance footage appeared to show him and another person watching Long inside the liquor store and waiting for him to return to his car, and then began shooting. A witness interviewed by police said Owens and the other shooter believed Long was a member of a gang member, but that reportedly turned out not to be true.

Owens also pleaded guilty to fatally shooting Hayter, 20, whom police found dead on July 7 in a car on West 8th Avenue when they responded to do a welfare check. Police believe she rode in the car Owens was in the night of the liquor store shooting, which records showed belonged to Hayter.

He pleaded guilty on Feb. 13, according to a news release.

“Charging a juvenile as an adult is something we take extremely seriously because the juvenile brain is still developing and young people can be very impulsive and susceptible to peer influence,” said Denver District Attorney Beth McCann in a statement. “In this case, Jayque Owens deliberately planned these murders and his actions rippled through Denver’s Montbello community affecting its youth in particular.”

Two teenagers were also found shot to death in Hayter’s apartment later on July 7.

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