Denver Couple Recalls Moments Lyndon McLeod Tried To Kill Them
DENVER (CBS4) – A Denver man who was targeted and attacked in the brutal Denver-Lakewood shooting spree on Monday barely made it out alive. Jeremy Costilow sat down with CBS4 for the first time on Wednesday morning to share his harrowing story.
Costilow and his girlfriend, Chelsea Matthews, say it all started with a knock at their back door, adjacent to the tattoo shop they own, 6 Collective. Matthews answered with their 3-month-old baby, Lily Jolene, in her arms.
"I looked in the peephole, and I saw it was a delivery or mail carrier, and he said 'I have a package for Jeremy Costilow.'" Matthews says she immediately knew the man was suspicious.
"Normally, mail people just say I have a delivery. He was aggressive," she told CBS4's Mekialaya White. "And he pressed me to see if Jeremy lived there. I said, 'maybe try around front,' and he said, 'oh the tattoo shop?' A random person wouldn't know that because it doesn't say tattoo shop on the building."
The couple says he backed off, then Matthews shut and closed the door. The suspicious man returned a short time later.
"About 10 minutes later the door was getting caved in, so I guess he was sledgehammering the wall in to get into the house," said Costilow. "As soon as we locked ourselves in, he was beating on a second door. So we moved into this other room… and he fired six shots through the door at us. We saw the bullets and saw the holes coming through."
They escaped, and finally found a safe place to hide thanks to a neighboring business.
RELATED: How To Help: Colorado Healing Fund Collecting Donations For Shooting Spree Victims
"We sprinted out 6th Avenue and went west. Then, maybe like five minutes later, we hear a huge explosion... Jeremy's van was on fire and my heart sunk because I was like this person, in my heart was trying to kill him. I was like he's trying to murder him," explained Matthews.
Costilow says he'd learned of a threat on his life from the attacker, Lyndon McLeod, years ago, but he never thought he would follow through.
"We had a shop together in 2015 called All Heart Industry, and it just went bad really quick. His mentality, his mannerisms, he was just a terrible person I found out. I broke that business off with him, and he hated that so bad that I ended the business with him. I never thought it would come to something like this. Later, his ex-girlfriend came to me between those years and warned me that he had been planning to kill me. She had said he was pretty adamant, 'I'm going to kill that guy.'"
Costilow he hadn't spoken to McLeod since then, but McLeod had left flyers on the front of 6 Collective months before the shooting happened. The flyers alluded to a book series he authored.
"I guess he wanted me to read it to see that in the book a character was going to kill me and behead (my girlfriend)," said Costilow.
The pair hadn't read the book, and say they weren't aware it mentioned Costilow until the shootings happened. "That was like a promise that he was going to fulfill. He talked about killing Jeremy the tattoo artist on 6th Avenue," Matthews said.
Though the family survived, they're devastated friends and fellow members of the tattoo community were senselessly murdered. Their hearts go out to all of them.
"Everybody involved in this is a victim by definition, but we survived it, and I have to thank Jeremy for that and of course the Lord," said Matthews.
