African refugee Goro Zuwa stands with his friend Eugene Karekezi (with crutches) after their graduations from high school in Denver. (Photo courtesy of Street Fraternity)
A Denver man who pleaded guilty to the murder of a refugee from Africa has received a suspended sentence of 28 years in prison pending completion of a seven-year program in the state’s Youthful Offender System.
Denver District Court Judge Alex Myers issued the sentence Monday to Trevounce Duckworth, 19, who had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Zuwa Goro on Feb. 11, 2022. Denver prosecutors had urged a sentence of 15 years in state prison.
Duckworth apologized and took responsibility during a three-hour sentencing hearing. Somebody had fired shots at the house where he lived in the East Colfax neighborhood. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting. I made the wrong choice,” Duckworth said.
“I never want to harm anyone ever again. ….. I did the worst thing any man can do. Today I can say I was wrong. I will continue to change for the better.”
Duckworth was 17 at the time of the killing. Denver prosecutors pointed to a surveillance video that showed Duckworth shooting Goro in the back and then standing over him firing more shots.
That evidence of “a callous, cold act, merciless…… running up and making sure there was a kill shot…. is absolutely horrifying” and easily would justify a maximum allowable sentence in state prison, Myers said.
But, he said, “it is not enough for Mr. Duckworth to just be sent to the Department of Corrections” because, with credit earned, he could be released in eight years “and then he would be back in the community,” he said.
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The youthful offender system provides a structured rehabilitation program and “is the only chance I see that he will be able to re-enter the community in a safe and productive way,” he said.
Attorneys for Duckworth said he saw friends and relatives killed and lived in 2021 with his unemployed mother in a car. Childhood trauma delayed his development at school, they said, and at the time of the murder he suffered from a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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