COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – A student at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (UCCS) has been accused of murdering his roommate and another person in a campus dormitory last week. Nicholas Jordan, originally from Detroit, Michigan, appeared at the El Paso County Court on Friday.
The incident happened last Friday, February 16, in a shared dormitory known as a ‘POD.’ The POD features a common area encompassed by four individual bedrooms with locked doors. Jordan, 25, shared the dormitory with the deceased, his 24-year-old roommate Samuel Knopp from Parker, Colorado, as well as another student. The fourth bedroom was vacant.
Celie Rain Montgomery, a resident of Pueblo, was also found dead from gunshot wounds in Knopp’s bedroom along with him. The victims’ discovery followed the reporting of the incident by the third roommate after he heard what appeared to be gunshots and a distinct moaning sound.
The court affidavit made it apparent that tension had been building up prior to the incident due to Jordan’s reported habits of trash neglect and marijuana and cigarette smoking within the premises. There had been several instances where Knopp and the other roommate had complained about Jordan representing a risk to safe living conditions.
In an argument that took place in January, Jordan had reportedly threatened Knopp’s life over a trash bag dispute. As per the affidavit, Jordan explicitly warned of lethal consequences if he was asked to take out the trash again.
Following his arrest on Monday in Colorado Springs, Jordan’s bond has been set at $5 million during a subsequent Tuesday hearing. The UCCS campus, situated along Austin Bluffs Parkway in northeast Colorado Springs, one of four campuses in the University of Colorado system, has been left shocked by the incident.