The armed man who prompted a Denver police shooting that wounded six bystanders in Lower Downtown last summer was sentenced to prison Thursday.
Denver District Court Judge Nikea Bland sentenced Jordan Waddy, 23, to two-and-a-half years in prison on a single count of conspiracy to commit possession of a weapon by a previous offender. He faced up to three years in prison on the low-level felony conviction.
Waddy was holding a gun when three Denver police officers shot at him around 1:30 a.m. on July 17, 2022, near 20th and Larimer streets as bars let out for the night in the busy nightlife district. One officer, Brandon Ramos, also wounded six bystanders in the shooting, sparking outrage across Denver.
The sentencing of Waddy, who was wounded in the shooting, comes just weeks after Ramos pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was sentenced to 18 months of probation. He was the only police officer to be criminally charged after a grand jury found that only Ramos’ shots hit the bystanders.
The officers confronted Waddy because they believed he was carrying a gun. They followed him through streets crowded with pedestrians and approached Waddy, who pulled a pistol from his clothing and was holding it by the slide on top of the gun when the officers fired, body camera footage shows.
Ramos, who fired from a different angle than the other two officers, could see there was a large crowd of people behind Waddy and should not have fired, a grand jury found. Waddy never turned the gun toward Ramos or directly threatened him, the grand jury found. Everyone who was shot survived.
Qusair Mohamedbhai, an attorney representing some of the wounded bystanders in a lawsuit over the shooting, criticized Waddy’s sentence on Friday.
“Mr. Waddy’s sentencing makes clear that there are two criminal justice systems in Denver,” he said in a statement. “While one set of standards applies to the public, a different set of standards apply to law enforcement… Although (Ramos’) actions alone likely wounded more people than any police shooting in over a decade, he will not spend a single night in jail.”
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.
