In the early hours of July 8, 2020, a welfare check at a Denver, Colorado, apartment complex led to a tragic discovery. Inside an apartment on East Albrook Drive, police found the bodies of two male teenagers, 15-year-old Moses Chaney Harris and 14-year-old Xzavier Collier. Both boys had been fatally shot, and their deaths were quickly investigated as a double homicide. The grim finding sent a shockwave through the community, marking a tragic chapter in a string of youth violence that had plagued the city.
The investigation into the deaths of Moses and Xzavier soon revealed a dark and interconnected series of events. The apartment where the two teenagers were found belonged to 22-year-old Kalani Hayter. Just a day earlier, on July 7, Hayter herself had been found shot to death inside her car. The connection between the three deaths was immediate and alarming to investigators, suggesting a wider and more violent narrative was unfolding on the streets of Denver. The scope of the investigation broadened even further as detectives looked into another recent killing, the July 5 shooting death of 23-year-old Yaun Yae Long in the parking lot of a liquor store.
As police pieced together the events of that violent week, their attention focused on a single suspect: 16-year-old Jayque Owens. The investigation revealed that Hayter’s vehicle was linked to the scene of Long's murder, and Owens was identified as being involved. On July 9, Owens was arrested with another individual on unrelated warrants, and he was found in possession of two semi-automatic pistols, one of which had been reported stolen. This arrest was a significant breakthrough, connecting Owens to the timeline of the interconnected murders.
In May of 2023, following a lengthy legal process during which he was charged as an adult, Jayque Owens, then 18, was sentenced to 58 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Yaun Yae Long and Kalani Hayter. While the deaths of Moses Chaney Harris and Xzavier Collier were a pivotal part of the investigation and occurred in Hayter's home, public records detailing Owens' conviction focus on the charges directly related to Long and Hayter. The full story of what transpired in that apartment, and why Moses and Xzavier were targeted, remains a painful question for their families.
