At twenty-eight years old, Sarah Steck was behind the front desk of the Hyatt House hotel in Lakewood, Colorado, on the evening of December 27, 2021, her life a canvas of promise and creativity. A recent graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver with a fine arts degree, she was known for her infectious laugh, her love for kittens, and a passion for art and music.
That night, however, she was not even supposed to be at work, having picked up a shift for a sick colleague, a simple twist of fate that placed her in the path of a devastating and random act of violence.
A man, later identified as Lyndon McLeod, entered the hotel lobby and, after a brief exchange with Sarah, opened fire. The violence that erupted was part of a larger shooting spree that had begun in Denver and now spilled into the quiet of the hotel. Sarah was tragically shot and would later succumb to her injuries at a local hospital, becoming the fifth and final victim of the rampage. Law enforcement believes that while McLeod had previous dealings with the hotel, he had no prior connection to Sarah herself, marking her as a random victim in a series of targeted attacks. She was, by all accounts, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The aftermath of the shooting spree saw the community mourning the senseless loss of life. McLeod's violent path ended shortly after his encounter with Sarah when he was confronted by a Lakewood police officer. In the ensuing shootout, the officer was wounded, but managed to return fire, killing McLeod and ending his deadly rampage. In the days and weeks that followed, an outpouring of grief and support for Sarah's family emerged, with friends, coworkers, and strangers alike creating a makeshift memorial outside the hotel where her life was so tragically cut short. They remembered a kind and caring young woman with a promising future in the art world, a life of unrealized dreams extinguished in a moment of inexplicable violence.
