An Aurora man who shot a man in the back with no provocation and no warning has been sentenced to 32 years in prison.
Judge Patricia Herron on Dec. 1, 2017, sentenced Lloyd Rickey Henderson, 38, to 32 years in the Department of Corrections for killing Corey Clemons, who was 30.
On Sept. 22, an Arapahoe County jury found Henderson guilty of second-degree murder, a Class 2 felony.
Aurora police were called to the Canterra at Fitzsimons apartments in the 300 block of Potomac Way early in the morning of Sept. 27, 2015.
A woman at the scene told them her son had been shot. Officers found Corey Clemons just outside of their apartment, shot in the back and unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at University of Colorado Hospital.
“The victim never got a warning,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Thomas Byrnes told the court during sentencing. Henderson “shot him in the back when he was unarmed and his own mother was an eyewitness.”
The officers’ investigation revealed that Clemons had been arguing with his mother’s live-in boyfriend in their apartment. There was a verbal argument between those two men, but neither of them had any weapon.
When they moved their argument outside, the boyfriend’s cousin, Henderson, had parked outside and was waiting to give the boyfriend a ride.
According to witnesses, the two other men argued but neither asked Henderson to intervene. But Henderson pulled out a gun without warning and shot Clemons in front of his mother and her boyfriend. Henderson jumped in his car and drove away and later asked his girlfriend to hide the handgun he used in the murder.
“Here is yet another previously convicted felon (for stabbing another man) who was able to obtain, use, and dispose of a firearm in violation of our laws. This one happened to be a coward, who shot an innocent man in the back and then gutlessly ran away from his crime and had his girlfriend dispose of his murderous weapon,” said District Attorney George Brauchler. “Corey Clemons deserves to be alive. Henderson deserves to be in prison for decades.”
