In the late summer evening of August 23, 2020, in Lakewood, Colorado, the lives of two teenage brothers were tragically cut short in the parking lot of a Walmart. Seventeen-year-old Dillon Clark Wikoff, a male, and his eighteen-year-old brother, Damian Michael Wikoff, had arranged to meet with other teenagers to sell a homemade 'ghost gun.' The brothers, who both worked nearby, often met up in this parking lot during their breaks. This meeting, however, took a fatal turn.
The arranged sale was a setup for a robbery. Michael Mendoza, who was seventeen at the time, had recruited a group of other teens to rob the Wikoff brothers. During the course of the robbery, both Dillon and Damian were shot and killed. The assailants fled the scene, leaving the two brothers with fatal injuries. They were transported to local hospitals where they were pronounced dead. The incident was not a random act of violence, but a planned robbery that escalated to a double homicide.
The investigation into the deaths of Dillon and Damian Wikoff led to the arrest of four juvenile suspects. Marqueil Banks, who was sixteen at the time of the shooting, was identified as the shooter. He was charged as an adult and, in March 2023, was convicted of first-degree murder. Banks was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Michael Mendoza pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and manslaughter and was sentenced to approximately 20 years in prison.
The two other suspects, both fifteen at the time of the killings, also faced legal consequences. One pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery and was sentenced to two years of juvenile intensive supervised probation. The other pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to four years in a juvenile detention facility. The sentencing of Marqueil Banks in May 2023 marked the conclusion of the legal proceedings against all four individuals involved in the deaths of Dillon and Damian Wikoff.
