Jayden Hoyle

Jayden Hoyle was a happy and energetic 13-year-old boy with a great smile who loved life and other people. An eighth-grader at Denver Green School, the Black male was described by his mother, Tasha Cooper, as generous and kind, known for giving away his school snacks, shoveling snow for neighbors, and helping his grandmother with chores. He was the youngest of four children and was preparing for his Confirmation at his church.

On the evening of April 8, 2022, Jayden was a passenger in a sedan with his best friend, 14-year-old Adrion Foster, in Denver, Colorado. Around 6 p.m., as they traveled south on North Peoria Street, a second sedan pulled alongside them. Someone inside the other car fired shots into the vehicle carrying the two teenagers. The gunfire caused the driver to lose control, and the car veered into oncoming traffic, where it collided head-on with a pickup truck.

Jayden Hoyle and Adrion Foster were pronounced dead at the scene. The medical examiner later confirmed that both boys died from gunshot wounds. The driver of the pickup truck, 37-year-old Uriel Reyes Medina, was a father of three on his way home to have dinner with his family. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died from multiple blunt force injuries sustained in the crash. The sedan from which the shots were fired fled the scene.

Denver police launched a homicide investigation, searching for a dark-colored, mid-sized sedan. In the days that followed, authorities asked for the public’s help, and Metro Denver Crime Stoppers offered a reward for information. Adrion’s family remembered the two boys as having “great futures in front of them,” noting that Adrion dreamed of becoming a football or basketball player and had already been accepted into a junior college. In the wake of her son’s death, Jayden's mother, Tasha Cooper, became an advocate against gun violence, channeling her grief into community action.

The investigation eventually led authorities to a suspect. Luis Rivas-Newcomb, who was 15 years old at the time of the shooting, was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. In a resolution to the case, Rivas-Newcomb pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. In April 2026, he was sentenced to 48 years in prison. In a statement, Denver District Attorney John Walsh said, “The streets of Denver are safer because of the 48-year prison sentence Rivas-Newcomb will now serve.”