A Mountain View Town Council member is accused of shooting a 17-year-old in the face as the teen was sitting in his car and writing a note to ask for permission to take pictures near a mountain lake for an upcoming homecoming date.
The teen was seriously injured in the Tuesday afternoon shooting in the 23000 block of Pleasant Park Road near Conifer when Brent Metz, 38, allegedly fired a gun through the windshield of the teen’s car, according to a news release from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
Metz was arrested in connection with the shooting on charges of first-degree assault, two counts of felony menacing, illegal discharge of a firearm and reckless endangerment.
Metz has served on the Mountain View Town Council for three years, said John Beltrone, the town administrator. Metz lives in Mountain View. Jacki Kelley, a Jefferson County sheriff’s spokeswoman, said he is a co-owner of the property near Conifer.
The teen, who has not been publicly identified, remained hospitalized Wednesday, Kelley said.
The 17-year-old told sheriff’s deputies that he and a friend drove around Deer Creek Canyon after school on Tuesday to look for a pretty setting to take pictures ahead of Dakota Ridge High School’s homecoming celebration over the weekend. The teens saw the Pleasant Park Road property, which featured a lake and a dock, and decided to ask permission to come back for their picture session, according to a Jefferson County arrest affidavit obtained by The Denver Post.
The boys parked at the front gate and walked up the long driveway to speak to the homeowner, arrest affidavit said. They knocked on the front door but no one answered. They did not see a doorbell.
The sheriff’s news release said the two boys had jumped a fence to go to the house and that they had walked around the house to look for anyone who might be outside.
After failing to find the property owner, the teens returned to their car, which was parked on the roadside, and the driver began writing a note in his school binder to ask permission to use the property as a setting for the homecoming pictures, the arrest affidavit said.
That’s when Metz, who the teens said they had never met, allegedly drove up in a truck and blocked their car from the front. Metz got out of his pickup, pulled a handgun from a holster and fired a shot into the car’s windshield, according to the arrest affidavit. One of the teens told an investigator that he heard Metz say, “Oh (expletive), my gun went off.”
The teen who was shot told the deputy that he did not think Metz shot him intentionally and that Metz had tried to help until the friend pushed him away.
A woman who co-owns the home had called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office to report trespassers after a security camera recorded the teens walking around the property, Kelley said. She was not home at the time, Kelley said, and she also called Metz — her boyfriend and a co-owner of the property.
A deputy was already en route to the address when the shooting occurred.
When the deputy, arrived he found the teens’ Audi and Metz’s GMC pickup parked on the side of Pleasant Park Road and the teens outside with Metz standing beside them. The victim’s face was bleeding heavily and his friend was applying pressure with a T-shirt, the news release stated. The deputy found a gun in Metz’s truck.
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