DENVER — A former coworker said the man accused of shooting and killing five people in Denver and Lakewood in December threatened him with a gun a decade ago.
The suspect, Lyndon McLeod, wrote about killing Rudy Perez in his alt-right revenge novels where he named real people and how he would kill them.
But Perez, targeted for death in the books, said he didn't find out about the writings until after the shooting.
Perez knew McLeod 10 years ago as a coworker at a medical marijuana warehouse in Denver. Today, the business is a furniture store. In 2012, Perez said, they got into a fight there after McLeod lost a competition growing marijuana at work.
"He accused me of poisoning his plants when his room was locked," Perez said.
Court documents recently unsealed show McLeod pointed a gun at Perez and another coworker. He later pleaded guilty to one count of felony menacing. McLeod was granted a two-year deferred judgment. He fulfilled the conditions of probation and the case was dismissed and then sealed in 2014, documents show.
After the Dec. 27 shooting spree that left five people dead and two others injured, 9NEWS, along with Colorado Public Radio and Denverite, petitioned the Denver District Court to unseal the 2012 case. A judge granted that request earlier this month.
"He would come in wearing bulletproof vests and have a swagger. He would throw knives, not at us or anything, but inside of his area he had a knife-throwing thing," Perez said.
McLeod wrote about killing Perez in his alt-right revenge novels. A man from Germany warned Denver police about the writings about a year before the crime spree.
Perez said no one from the department has contacted him, and he didn't know about the books until after the shooting.
"I think it would have been nice to know to look over my shoulder once in a while," Perez said.
According to Perez, he didn't see McLeod after the incident in 2012, but McLeod wrote about a car Perez bought a year later.
"He had seen me driving my little white truck, and that is the only vehicle he had only seen me in. He said I drove an SUV with rims, chrome rims. That is exactly what I had in 2013," Perez said.
Even knowing about the case in 2012 and the books, 9NEWS Legal Expert Scott Robinson said it wouldn't have been enough to arrest McLeod.
Perez wishes more was done to at least warn the people mentioned in the novels.
"I feel for the people that have suffered losses and did lose their lives because they could have looked over their shoulder," Perez said. "They could have prepared for things. They could have moved."
We asked the Denver Police Department if they reached out to any of the people named in the book after they received the tip from the man in Germany. They pointed us to Denver's Department of Safety. That office is conducting an internal review of DPD's handling of the case.
They expect to release more information in the coming weeks.
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