Updated at 5:59 p.m. on Monday April 7, 2025.
The Deputy who shot and killed 23-year-old Jalin Seabron outside the Main Event arcade bar in Highlands Ranch did not break Colorado law, according to the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office. The fatal shooting happened Feb. 8 after the deputy responded to reports of gunshots inside the building.
Following Seabron’s death, investigators discovered he was not the person who opened fire at the Main Event. But he was holding a gun while protecting his pregnant girlfriend and trying to get her outside safely.
“Jalin Seabron’s life had value. The loss of that life is a tragedy,” Douglas County District Attorney George Brauchler said at a press conference Monday. He described the scene as an active shooter situation.
“I find the shooting—as tragic as it was—was a justified legal use of force under Colorado law,” Brauchler said.
Brauchler emphasized the DA’s investigation had a narrow focus on whether Deputy Nicholas Moore followed Colorado law enforcement law.
“What happened inside the Main Event is not relevant,” Brauchler said. “Deputy Moore never heard any of the 911 calls. He didn’t know the shooter’s description. He didn’t know if there was more than one shooter, just that there’s an active shooting taking place. He doesn’t know what weapons they used, the number of injured or dead that he’ll encounter.”
“It’s also not relevant whether Mr. Seabron’s firearm was lawfully possessed,” he said. “What we’re focusing on is Deputy Moore’s objectively reasonable belief of the situation.”
Audio of 911 calls on Feb. 8 detailed at least 10 shots fired inside the building. That dispatch information was relayed to Moore when he responded to the call.
“We have multiple callers detailing shots were fired… another caller said someone walked in and started shooting,” the dispatcher said.
When Moore arrived on the scene, Seabron was standing outside his vehicle with a gun at his side.
An autopsy report showed Seaborn, who was celebrating his birthday with family members, had a significant amount of drugs and alcohol in his system, which may have contributed to his reaction time to the deputy’s commands.
Seabron’s family has demanded justice in the case, and questions have been raised about whether he had had time to comply with the deputy’s orders.
The attorney for the Seabron family, Tyler Glover, released the raw bodycam footage so the public could see the event for themselves. Douglas County initially chose not to release the unedited version, but rather a narrated version to explain events that led to Seabron’s death. They provided unedited footage to Seabron's family and to others who requested it.
Standard policies determine the level of force used by police in the field. In Colorado, law allows police officers to use deadly force “if the peace officer has objectively reasonable grounds to believe, and does believe, that he or another person is in imminent danger of being killed or of receiving serious bodily injury,” according to state statutes. Video footage of the shooting shows several people in the parking lot when the deputy arrived.
Seabron’s mother, Veronica Seabron, found the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office version difficult to stomach.
“The nerve, the audacity, the lies,” she said. “You know what you did, but you have to protect yours. It's so contradicting compared to some other cases where they're supporters of carrying weapons, but now you turn it to benefit you in this situation, and you didn't know my son. You didn't know what you pulled up to.”
Deputy Moore fired 9 rounds, 7 of which hit Seabron. The other two hit his vehicle. According to the Castle Rock Police Department, which investigated the incident, the entire shooting took 4 seconds.
“Could he have waited longer?” Brauchler asked about Moore's actions. “Let's think it really [was] an active shooter. If the deputy had allowed that person to shoot just one more person, wouldn't we all be sitting here going, ‘Why the hell didn't he take action?’”
With the information Deputy Moore had at the time of the shooting, Brauchler said Moore acted in accordance with the law. But, with more guns in circulation now than ever, experts say incidents like this one are becoming more common.
“It underscores the challenges of policing in the United States,” said Prof. Daniel Webster, an expert in gun violence at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “How in the heck does a law enforcement officer, in split seconds, determine who is a good guy with the gun and who is the bad guy with the gun?”
In Colorado, about 2 million guns have been sold since 2020, according to approved background check data from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Between 2004 and 2024, there were 13 officer-involved shootings and 17 people shot by Douglas County sheriff’s deputies. According to DA Brauchler, one was a black male.
This story includes reporting from CPR’s Ben Markus and Jo Erickson.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to more precisely describe the availability of raw bodycam and dashcam footage.
