GOLDEN, Colo. — All four defendants have been sentenced in connection with the murders of two brothers in Lakewood in 2020.
Marqueil Banks, now 18, was convicted by a Jefferson County jury on March 31, 2023 of two counts of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery. He is one of the four juveniles involved in the crime and was the final one to be sentenced.
On May 30, he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 40 years, according to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Previously, Michael Mendoza, now 20, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and manslaughter on Jan. 31, 2022 and was sentenced on April 27, 2023 to 20.5 years in the Department of Corrections. Both he and Banks were charged as adults.
An unnamed third juvenile, who was 15 at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery and received two years of juvenile intensive supervised probation. A fourth juvenile, also 15 at the time of the crime, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received four years in the Department of Youth Services.
The four defendants' crimes in this case began on Aug. 23, 2020, when brothers 18-year-old Damian Wikoff and 17-year-old Dillon Wikoff arranged to sell a homemade ghost gun they had assembled from a kit they purchased online, and trade it for another gun. They decided to meet outside a Lakewood Walmart.
Mendoza gathered a group of juveniles to rob the brothers.
During the robbery, the brothers were both shot and killed by Banks.
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Investigators traced Mendoza and Banks through Facebook messages on Dillon Wikoff's phone, the arrest affidavit said. On the night of the shooting, Mendoza was wearing a GPS ankle monitor as part of the pre-trial process for an unrelated case, according to the affidavit.
On Aug. 31, 2020, officers arrested Banks and Mendoza.
