A Colorado man involved in a 2023 quadruple shooting in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood was sentenced this week to 15 years in federal prison for illegally possessing ammunition.
Tyrell Braxton, 25, had been out of federal prison for just four months and was on supervised release when authorities allege he was one of at least eight shooters who fired 71 shots during a shootout in Five Points on Aug. 19, 2023, federal court records show.
The exchange of gunfire at 28th and Welton streets killed 25-year-old Gulian Musiwa and 23-year-old Lumumba Sayers Jr. Two women were wounded but survived.
Braxton was arrested on charges of first-degree murder in Musiwa’s killing, but Denver prosecutors dropped the criminal case against him in December 2023. He was indicted a month later on the federal ammunition charge, and federal jurors convicted Braxton in October of illegally possessing ammunition as a felon.
State prosecutors wrote in a motion to dismiss the murder charge that they could not prove the case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The court records were then sealed from public view, and Colorado law now prohibits prosecutors from discussing the state case.
In federal court filings, Braxton’s attorneys said Denver prosecutors dismissed the state murder case because they felt Braxton might have been acting in self-defense when he fired.
“The prosecution did not believe that they could disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt,” defense attorney Lisa Moses wrote in a federal filing.
Federal prosecutors said Braxton shot Musiwa “without provocation” — surveillance footage showed him shooting Musiwa in the chest at close range — and sought the maximum 15-year prison term on the illegal ammunition conviction.
The shootout happened at about 3:48 a.m. and the gunfire went on for a full minute, federal prosecutors wrote. Braxton was hanging out on the street corner — with a group of people that included Sayers Jr. — for more than 90 minutes before the shooting.
At 3:48 a.m., Misuwa walked up to the street corner and exchanged words with Braxton, who then shot six times at Misuwa, hitting him in the chest and back, according to federal court records. The women who were hurt were standing nearby.
Braxton’s shots set off a torrent of violence: people at the street corner fired at least 71 shots from eight different guns, prosecutors said. One of the shooters was Dontay Bumphus, 36, surveillance video showed. He pleaded guilty to possessing a gun and ammunition as a felon and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison in October.
Braxton was one of four shooters who fired toward Sayers Jr. during the shootout, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. Sayers Jr. was also armed and fired six shots during the exchange, federal prosecutors said.
“Mr. Sayers Jr. was then shot and killed by one of the shooters on the east side of Welton — either (Braxton) or the three additional gunmen,” a prosecution filing reads.
The Five Points shootout sparked later violence, authorities say.
Sayers Jr.’s father, Lumumba Sayers Sr., 46, was arrested in 2024 and charged with killing a man in Commerce City in what authorities allege was an act of revenge for his son’s death. The father-and-son pair previously operated a gym that they said was dedicated to preventing gun violence.
Moses asked U.S. District Court Judge Brooke Johnson to sentence Braxton to just over two years in prison on the illegal ammunition conviction. Moses pointed to Braxton’s traumatic childhood — his mother addicted to drugs and his father was abusive, she wrote. He required Braxton to carry a gun from a young age, Moses wrote.
Braxton was first convicted of illegally carrying a gun when he was 14, prosecutors wrote. They sought — and received — the maximum possible sentence.
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