A University of Colorado-Colorado Springs student was arrested Monday morning after authorities found the bodies of two individuals in a dorm on campus.
Nicholas Jordan, 25, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of 26-year-old Celie Rain Montgomery and 24-year-old Samuel Knopp, the Associated Press reported. Knopp was a student studying music at UCCS, but Montgomery was not currently enrolled.
On Friday around 6 a.m., the UCCS Police Department received a report of shots fired at the Crestone House, a campus dorm, the Colorado Springs Police Department said on X. Police found the room where the shots had originated and discovered the bodies of two adults, one male and one female.
Later that evening, after an investigation, the CSPD Homicide Unit obtained an arrest warrant for Jordan, a student at the university originally from Detroit, Michigan. Police then began searching for Jordan while an autopsy was performed on the two victims’ bodies at the El Paso County Coroner’s Office. Each student was shot, but the coroner’s office has yet to determine the exact cause and manner of death.
On Monday morning just before 8 a.m., the CSPD’s Motor Vehicle Theft Unit located Jordan in a vehicle. Nearly an hour later, the Tactical Enforcement Unit responded and took him into custody without incident.
“It was really a smooth arrest,” Colorado Springs Police Chief Adrian Vasquez said, according to CBS News Colorado.
Jordan reportedly knew the victims, and the CSPD emphasized that the crime was “not a random attack against the school or other students at the university.”
UCCS held a “healing march” on Monday afternoon, with university chancellor Jennifer Sobanet, student body president Axel Brown, and UCCS Police Chief Dewayne McCarver addressing the crowd, CBS reported.
“Healing will take time. Rebuilding the trust and safety of our campus will take time,” Sobanet said, according to the outlet.
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“We’re all in this together. I just know he’d be happy to see this,” said Haden Gillespie, who was Knopp’s roommate.
“Of course, you have that feeling of being overwhelmed,” student body president Brown said.
“These kinds of tragedies big or small, definitely hit all around the world. It always happens. But we don’t really feel it until it hits our atmosphere, our circle,” junior Nissi Paugio said at the event, according to CBS.
