GOLDEN, Colo. — A man who killed two brothers in the parking lot of a Lakewood Wal-Mart in 2020 was found guilty Friday.
The 1st Judicial District Attorney’s Office said a Jefferson County jury returned guilty verdicts in the trial of Marqueil Banks, 18, for the murders of 18-year-old Damian Wikoff and 17-year-old Dillon Wikoff.
Banks is the last of four defendants in the case to be convicted. All four were juveniles at the time of the crime. Two of them were tried as adults, and two remained in juvenile court.
The Lakewood Police Department’s investigation found that on Aug. 23, 2020, the victims arranged to sell a homemade, untraceable “ghost gun” assembled from a kit they had purchased online, as well as to trade for another gun, outside the Walmart at Wadsworth Boulevard and Colfax Avenue.
The video above aired on Aug. 24, 2020
Instead, the DA’s office said, co-defendant Michael Mendoza recruited a group of teenagers to rob the Wikoff brothers. During the robbery, Banks shot and killed the brothers, according to the DA. He was 16 at the time.
Banks was convicted on first-degree murder and aggravated robbery charges. He will be sentenced on May 30, according to court records.
Mendoza, who was 17 at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty in January 2022 to aggravated robbery and manslaughter. He faces 10-25 years in prison when he’s sentenced on April 27.
In May 2021, a defendant who was 15 at the time of the crime pled guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery and received two years of juvenile intensive supervised probation.
In April 2022, another defendant who was 15 at the time of the crime pled guilty to first-degree murder and received four years in the Department of Youth Services.
