Arrest made in Colfax motel slaying

Scott Damon Bell

AURORA | Police last month charged a 38-year-old man with murder in connection with an early May slaying at a motel on East Colfax Avenue.

Scott Damon Bell was charged Jan. 21 with killing David Jeffrey Carpenter, 41, at the Carriage Motor Inn Motel, 9201 E. Colfax Ave.

According to jail records, Bell had been in the jail since December on a DUI charge when he was charged with Carpenter’s murder.

He is set to appear in court in April for a preliminary hearing.

In the hours after Carpenter’s death, witnesses told police that a group of five men, including Carpernter and the gunman, were smoking crack in a motel room prior to the shooting, according to an arrest affidavit filed against Bell.

One of the witnesses told police he met the gunman that afternoon at a bus stop and brought him to the room to smoke crack. Beyond that, nobody in the room knew the gunman.

A short time after the gunman arrived, he pulled a pistol from his vest and started threatening the other people in the room.

At one point, the gunman asked a man for a crack pipe and said: “Give me the crack pipe or I swear I will shoot you.”

When I woman in the room asked the gunman why he had the pistol, he replied: “I have one in the chamber, I will kill you.”

Carpenter later left the room with another man to get $30 worth of crack for the gunman. When he left, Carpenter told the other man, “I’m going to get that dude,” referring to the gunman.

When Carpenter returned, he told the gunman he had the drugs and that they should go into the bathroom to smoke.

On their way into the bathroom, Carpenter reached for the gun, and he and the gunman started fighting. In the ensuing struggle, which spilled out the door and into the parking lot, Carpenter was shot several times but managed to wrestle the gun away.

The gunman then fled in a green pickup truck parked in front of the room.

When officers arrived, Carpenter lay dying in front of the motel room door, holding the pistol in his hand. He died later that day at an area hospital.

Police later traced the gun to Bell, whose mother purchased it in March at an Aurora sporting goods store.

At Bell’s home near South Chambers Road and East Hampden Avenue in Aurora, police found a green pickup truck matching the one the gunman drove away from the scene.

Police later searched Bell’s home and found 9-millimeter cartridges matching the shell casings found at the scene and an empty gun box for a pistol similar to the one used to kill Carpenter.

Evidence from Bell’s cell phone also placed him near the Carriage Inn on the day of the slaying.

Some evidence, however, pointed away from Bell. DNA found on the gun didn’t match his DNA, and none of the witnesses in the room that night picked him out of a police lineup.