JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Prosecutors rested their case against a former town council member accused of four charges related to shooting a teenage boy in the face who was helping his friend find the perfect location to take homecoming pictures in 2024.
The teenager, Jack Howard, took the witness stand on Thursday, retelling that traumatic day to the jury and explaining he initially thought he would die from his injuries.
The defense team for Brent Metz, which called their first witness in the case late in the day, argues the gun malfunctioned and is working to cast doubt upon the way the boys remember the shooting.
This case started on Sept. 10, 2024. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO) said two teens had trespassed on Metz's property, which is located along the 23000 block of Pleasant Park Road, as they searched for a place to take homecoming photos. At 4:15 p.m., a woman later identified as Metz's girlfriend called 911 to report trespassers. She called Metz too.
When first responders arrived, they found two cars on the side of the road. Howard was bleeding from his face while another boy, Luke Brookhouser, applied pressure to the wounds. Metz was nearby. JCSO said Howard told police that the two boys had been trying to find a place to take pictures and jumped the fence on the property to ask the homeowners for permission. However, they said nobody appeared home, so they walked back down the long driveway back to their car to write a note for the homeowners.
As they were doing that, Metz pulled up in a truck and fired one round through the other car's windshield, the JCSO said. According to Metz' arrest affidavit, he tried to help after the shooting, but the uninjured teen pushed him away.
Metz was arrested and formally charged with second-degree assault (recklessly causing a serious bodily injury with a deadly weapon), two counts of felony menacing and illegal discharge of a firearm. All are felonies. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in April 2025.
Metz was a member of the Mountain View Town Council and was removed from the position during a special election in May of 2025.
Opening statements in the case were heard on Wednesday.
The first witness called to the stand on Thursday was Dr. Rebekah Latham, an emergency medicine physician who was working at CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood on the day of the shooting. Latham examined Howard when he was admitted to the hospital and testified that she believes he suffered serious bodily injury based on a substantial risk of death and permanent disfigurement.
Next, 911 dispatcher Morgan Gibson took the stand. She fielded the original call for service from Metz's partner who reported unknown individuals on the Conifer property.
The call was played in the courtroom, where the reporting party was heard saying, “it’s our property, and I just drove by and there’s a car parked in our driveway and there’s people up by our barn who are not supposed to be there."
Metz's girlfriend was not charged in this case, so Denver7 is not publishing her name.
The caller told Gibson she did not want to enter her home with her children in the car, so she was parked a few driveways away.
During the phone call, Metz's partner is heard telling Gibson the boys were "all over the place and looking everywhere." She said she knew that because Metz was watching the boys through cameras on the property.
Gibson advised the caller to wait until law enforcement arrived before approaching the unknown people, something Metz's girlfriend said they would do. She added that they would still like the boys to be charged with trespassing, even if they had departed by the time officers arrived.
“We literally have cameras on every ounce of our property," said the reporting party, letting Gibson know law enforcement could review the footage. "So if they’re gone, we still want them trespassed.”
Prosecutors then launched into questioning their expert witness in firearms design and manufacturing, Derek Watkins. The gun in this case was a SIG Sauer P320, which Watkins described in great detail, showing the jury the mechanics of the firearm on diagrams projected at the front of the courtroom.
Watkins ran a number of tests on the specific SIG Sauer P320 that was owned by Metz. According to Watkins, his analysis revealed — via the physical testing of the gun — that it would not have fired unless a trigger was pulled.
Watkins was asked about a competing witness in the case, who will be called by the defense team and likely testify that Metz was able to make the gun fire without pulling the trigger. Watkins called it a "parlor trick" when individuals partially pull a trigger, defeating the safeties on the weapon, and make the gun malfunction. He said that is a method he has observed in the past when individuals claim they have made a gun fire without pulling a trigger.
Following Watkins' testimony, Jack Howard took the witness stand. Howard, who turned 19 this week, is the teenager who was shot in the face.
In 2024, Howard was 17 years old. He told the jury that he picked up his best friend, then 15-year-old Luke Brookhouser, from school on Sept. 10, 2024.
The two drove in search of a spot to take homecoming pictures, when they came upon a scenic area and Howard parked in front of the gate. Howard told the jury that the teenagers first looked for an intercom or camera on the gate where they could communicate with the homeowners, but did not find anything of the sort.
The boys decided to hop the fence and knock on the front door. They walked down the long driveway and heard noise coming from a barn on the property. Howard said they knocked on the door but no one answered, so they retreated back along the driveway toward his parked car.
Howard estimated they spent roughly five minutes in total at the structures on the property looking for the homeowners. He observed a car driving slowly outside of the gate and thought it might be the person who owned the home.
“Because nobody was home, I was going to move [my car] because I thought that car was the owner, because I thought I was in the way," Howard explained.
Once back inside their car, the teenagers decided it would be a good idea to write a note asking the homeowners if they could use their property to take homecoming pictures. Howard, who was driving, backed out of the driveway and stopped on the left side of the road closest to the fence. He testified that he did not move his car again after clearing the driveway.
Meanwhile, Brookhouser volunteered to write the note. While Brookhouser was writing the note, Howard saw a black truck approaching their car. The truck pulled alongside their car and stopped.
"From what I was still awake for, I just saw the door open. I kind of turned to open my door because I was going to talk to the person, and I saw someone start to get out, and then it all went black," Howard testified.
Howard did not see who got out of the truck and has no recollection of the moment when he was shot.
The next thing the teenager remembers is when his friend and Metz were attempting to help him out of his car. He looked down, saw blood and "thought I was going to die."
Frantically, Howard repeated to his friend that he thought he may die.
"My mouth was on fire, and it felt like my upper lip was gone, and I could taste little fragments of something in my mouth, a bunch of blood," Howard told the jury.
That's when Howard realized he had been shot. He could not recall if Metz said anything to him.
Howard spent three days in the hospital as a result of his injuries, where three "main" bullet fragments were extracted from his face. The jury saw a picture of those fragments projected inside the courtroom.
“For about a week and a half after, I would have nosebleeds. I was missing half a tooth so I could not eat or drink hot or cold liquid or foods," Howard explained, describing the residual impacts of the shooting.
Still, Howard said he has "a black eye that will not go away. I have a really hard time breathing through my right nostril. If I have any type of mucus in my nose, it won’t stay in my nose, it just runs out because of the scar tissue. I sometimes lose sight in my left eye."
Smaller fragments of the bullet continued to come out of his face after the first three pieces were removed.
“They would come as, like, a really weird looking pimple type of thing, and then when I’d touch it I could tell that it was not from my body," Howard said.
When asked how he is doing currently, Howard said, “I’m doing better."
Howard said he was not allowed to view the body-worn camera footage that showed the moments following the shooting, so his testimony on Thursday was based solely on his memory.
Prosecutors then called JCSO Investigator Jaime Sieck to the witness stand. Sieck went to the hospital where Howard was being treated after the shooting and helped execute search warrants connected to the case.
As part of Sieck's investigation, he collected surveillance video from the Conifer property. A clip of that footage was played in the courtroom, where jurors observed Howard and Brookhouser approach the home and barn from the long driveway. The boys walk through the roundabout on the property, stopping at one structure before heading to the next one, with cats trotting behind them.
On the video, the jury could hear one of the boys knock, and another say "no one's here." Then, the two begin heading back down the driveway toward their vehicle.
A few moments of silence pass as the boys vanish in the video, before a loud gunshot rang out through the courtroom. Distant yelling could be heard.
Sieck testified that the property was owned by Metz's girlfriend's family, and that Metz resided at a different address but would come to this home as a "getaway."
Metz was a concealed carry permit holder, which Sieck said requires instruction about de-escalation.
“Obviously, if you’re bringing a gun to a situation, it’s going to escalate," Sieck said on the stand.
The JCSO investigator described the four universal rules of firearm safety for the jury: treat every gun as if it is loaded, keep fingers off the trigger, be aware of your target and beyond, and never point at something unless you are ready to destroy it.
The prosecution rested their case after Sieck's testimony.
The first witness Metz's defense team called to the witness stand was a psychology professor, Deryn Strange, who is an expert in memory distortion. Strange, who was called to the stand late in the day, told the jury that when humans experience a trauma response, it makes memory distortion more likely.
Metz's defense team will continue their argument on Friday morning with closing arguments expected Friday as well. Denver7 will be in the courtroom and will continue to cover this case as it is handed over to the jury.
