Denver Woman Charged With Murdering Fellow Postal Worker
DENVER (CBS4) - Jenny Nguyen, 27, was advised in Denver court Sunday of first-degree murder charges in the death of Jamal Thompson, 26. Thompson was found by police in a wrecked car just after midnight Saturday. He had been shot in the neck. Thompson died after he was taken to Denver Health Medical Center.
A United States Post Office spokesman confirmed Monday that both Denver residents are currently employed by the USPS and work at different locations.
Paramedics and Denver Police Department officers were dispatched to the intersection of 54th Avenue and Yampa Street at 12:10 a.m. Saturday. The call came into 911 as a vehicle crash with possible shots fired, according to arrest documents obtained by CBS4.
Officers arrived and found a white Ford Fusion that had rolled into a field at that intersection. The man inside the vehicle was slumped over both seats and bleeding from a neck wound. He "had been thrown about the interior of the vehicle," per police.
Police also found Nguyen's driver's license on the passenger seat of the car.
Later, investigators found 9mm shell casings on 54th Avenue, as well as a homeowner there who had encountered an angry Asian-American woman driving a white car a half hour earlier. He identified Nguyen as that driver when police showed him the picture on her driver's license.
Acting on a tip from the victim's mother, investigators and a SWAT team executed a search warrant late Saturday morning at Nguyen's residence near 54th Avenue and Tower Road.
The victim's mother told police her son and Nguyen had been in an on-again, off-again relationship.
Nguyen was taken to police headquarters for a formal interviews, according to the police documents. When asked several times about her involvement in the shooting, Nguyen hung her head, refused to answer, and began to cry.
Officers searching her home found a disassembled 9mm handgun in a bedroom heater vent. The barrel was missing. Recordings from the time of the shooting had also been deleted from her home's video surveillance system.
The coroner's office told investigators that the condition of Thompson's skin on his left hand, left face and chin suggested he had been shot at close range.
The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner released Thompson's identity Monday afternoon.
