On the night of July 3, 2025, 16-year-old Kaegan Wellman of the Fountain/Security-Widefield area was found shot to death inside a car on Highway 85/87 near Main Street in Fountain, Colorado. A second person, 24-year-old Rylee Ferari, was also found in the vehicle with gunshot wounds and did not survive.

Earlier that evening an El Paso County deputy encountered the car after it ran out of gas in the middle of the highway. The driver, later identified as 23-year-old Eddie LaCharles Jackson, stayed in the vehicle while Wellman and Ferari pushed it to the shoulder. Less than an hour later deputies responded to a 911 call about a robbery at the same location and discovered the car back in the roadway, Jackson gone, and both passengers fatally shot. Investigators recovered multiple boxes of ammunition and Jackson’s identification inside the vehicle; no firearms were recovered from the victims.

Jackson was located at Denver International Airport and taken into custody with Denver police; he was booked into the El Paso County Jail on two counts of second-degree murder. The arrest affidavit says Jackson gave shifting statements and at one point claimed he shot the passengers because he believed they were reaching for guns, a claim not supported by evidence.

Did anyone in the Fountain or Security-Widefield area see the vehicle or encounter the group that night?