John Jefferson
Left to right: Jason Carlson, Sherell Allen and Luke Anaya (Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office).
Authorities in Colorado arrested three people and are looking for a fourth after they allegedly attacked and beat up their roommate before holding him captive for several hours.
Deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office responded around 10 a.m. Monday to the Saint Anthony’s Medical Center in Lakewood, just outside Denver. A 45-year-old man in the emergency room had a horrifying ordeal to tell. He said he had been tied up and beaten over 14 hours by his roommates. According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, he told deputies he had lived in a home in the 4700 block of South Oak Court for a couple of weeks.
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The man said he was in a bedroom in a basement when he overheard his roommates — later identified as 49-year-old Jason Carlson, 48-year-old Sherell Allen, 39-year-old Jimmy Ray Smith II and 41-year-old Luke Anaya — were planning on attacking him, officials said. He first tried to crawl out of a window. When that didn’t work, he barricaded himself in the room by putting items in front of the door. But moments later, the men allegedly broke through the door and fired rock salt at him from airsoft-type guns. They then began assaulting him, the affidavit said.
Smith put his boot on the victim’s throat and applied enough pleasure to “cause him to lose consciousness,” cops wrote. The suspects allegedly bound him to a chair with zip ties and electrical tape. As he was tied down, the roommates “took turns” whacking the victim’s knees with a baseball bat. Then, Carlson poured rubbing alcohol on the victim’s face before “lighting the liquid on fire,” the affidavit said.
The assault continued in the basement and upstairs until two other people came to the home and told the suspects to leave him alone. He was driven to another house before someone else took him to the hospital. The man’s injuries matched his story. He had singed eyebrows, burns on his face, swollen and discolored knees and broken thyroid cartilage on his neck, the affidavit said. There was also evidence he had been tied down.
The victim gave cops the location of the assault, and they identified Carlson as the homeowner. The SWAT team arrested Carlson, Allen and Anaya and took them to jail, where they remain on bond ranging from $150,000 to $300,000. Smith remains at large. They are facing charges of attempted first-degree murder, kidnapping and assault.
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