Defendant in Boulder shooting headed for prison following plea deal
Dec. 16—One of the defendants in a Boulder shooting has accepted a plea and will serve prison time.
Simba Maat, 21, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault causing serious bodily injury, a Class 4 felony. As part of the plea deal, Maat will be sentenced to between five and eight years in prison.
"With this guilty plea, we reached an appropriate outcome in this case," Boulder County District Attorney's spokeswoman Shannon Carbone said in a statement. "Our office looks forward to the sentencing on Feb. 4 and we will have an additional statement at that time."
Maat, who remains in custody at the Boulder County Jail, will undergo a pre-sentence investigation.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped the original charges, including counts of first-degree assault, felony menacing and attempted robbery.
One of Maat's codefendants, Jacob Evans, has a status conference set for Tuesday.
The other codefendant, Madison Montross, has already pleaded guilty in the case.
According to an arrest affidavit, police were called to the parking lot outside a housing complex in the 2900 block of Shady Hollow West on March 19, 2020, for a report of a shooting.
Officers found a man with a gunshot wound to his upper right thigh and applied a tourniquet before he was taken to Boulder Community Health's Foothills Hospital for surgery.
A woman questioned at the scene initially denied knowing anything about the shooting but then admitted to dropping the shooting victim off to meet with friends. The woman said she was waiting in the car while the man met with his friends, and did not see or hear the gunshot.
A witness in the area identified a red Ford sedan speeding away from the scene.
Using the shooting victim's phone, police were able to find out he had been planning to meet Montross, and police identified Maat based on social media photos and witness descriptions.
A car matching the description of the one that fled the scene was found near Montross' home in Longmont, and police found Maat and Evans in the car and took them into custody.
Montross voluntarily turned herself in to police after being contacted by detectives.
The shooting victim, who was stabilized following surgery, said he got into the back of the car with a man he did not know — believed to be Evans — in the driver's seat, Montross in the front passenger seat and Maat in the back. The man said Maat pointed a gun at him and said, "Give me what you got."
The man said he told Maat they were "messing with the wrong guy" because he did not have any drugs. He told police he saw a packet of cocaine and grabbed it when Maat shot him.
Maat admitted to the shooting, but said the other man had a knife and that pulling the trigger was an accident. Police never found a knife in the car or at the scene.
Montross admitted she had set up the meet to buy cocaine from the shooting victim, but said she was sleeping in the car and did not witness the shooting. But police noted her password-protected phone showed activity during the time she claimed she was asleep.
Evans claimed he was not in the area at the time of the shooting, but the car used in the incident was found to belong to him, and he told police he had not let anyone else use it.
