Anthony Apodaca is charged with attempted first-degree murder after police said he shot Nico Francis at a downtown stoplight.
DENVER, Colo. — A Denver man charged with shooting a scooter rider in the neck at a downtown stoplight after a brief confrontation is due back in court April 21, as investigators say the attack was unprovoked and happened within minutes of the two men first seeing each other.
Anthony Apodaca, 31, was arrested shortly after the April 3 shooting near 18th and Stout streets and later charged with attempted first-degree murder. The case matters now because it has moved from the first burst of police activity into the court system, where a judge will review the charge and bond conditions at an advisement hearing. It also has drawn unusual attention because the victim, Nico Francis, has spoken publicly about being shot while riding a Lime scooter through downtown, then watching the accused leave jail on bond while he began a long recovery.
Francis said the night began routinely. He told local outlets he had left the Santa Fe Art Walk at about 11:30 p.m. and was riding a scooter across downtown to meet friends on Colfax Avenue. As he headed up Stout Street, he saw a white Chevrolet SUV stopped at a light near 16th Street, with a passenger yelling at people on the sidewalk and at a nearby bus stop. Francis said the passenger then turned his attention toward him, got out of the vehicle and demanded to know whether he had a problem. Francis said he tried to calm the encounter and told the man he did not want trouble. The SUV pulled away, but the encounter did not end there. At the next stop, near 18th and Stout, Francis said the same vehicle came up beside him again and the passenger already had a gun in hand.
Police and court records fill in the next part of the timeline. Officers were sent to the area just before 11:45 p.m. on April 3 and found Francis wounded at the intersection. According to the arrest affidavit described in public reporting, a witness told investigators the passenger in the SUV had been confrontational with people before focusing on Francis and asking whether he “got a problem.” Francis told police he answered that he did not. Investigators said the passenger then fired a single shot as the SUV drove away. Officers soon spotted a white Chevrolet Tahoe matching the suspect vehicle and stopped it. Public reporting on the affidavit says another passenger identified Apodaca as the shooter. The same reporting says witness accounts and surveillance footage helped police match Apodaca to the gunman by his clothing and position in the vehicle. Authorities have not publicly laid out a broader motive, and no public record so far suggests Francis knew Apodaca before that night.
The injury and its aftermath have become a major part of the case’s public shape. Francis said the bullet entered through his neck and exited through his shoulder blade. He told reporters that his right arm went limp almost at once, leaving him unable to use his phone normally as blood covered it. He said he began coughing up blood and feared he was dying on the sidewalk. Francis said a nearby couple in a Tesla drove away after he pleaded for help, and that another passerby later stopped, applied pressure to the wound and helped get 911 called. Francis has said he considers that stranger the person who saved his life. He was taken to a hospital, survived, and later said doctors told him the bullet missed a major artery by only a few millimeters. Even after leaving the hospital, he said he still had limited arm function, significant pain and a long stretch of treatment and rehabilitation ahead of him. He also said he expected to miss at least a month of work.
The legal case has moved faster than Francis’s recovery. Prosecutors asked for a $100,000 cash-only bond, according to the Denver District Attorney’s Office, but a judge instead set bond at $75,000 cash, property or surety. The court also imposed maximum home confinement, GPS monitoring and firearms relinquishment. Public reporting says a protection order was also filed. Jail and court records reviewed by local outlets showed that Apodaca posted bond and was released on Sunday, two days after the shooting. Francis later said that outcome felt like “a slap in the face,” a reaction that has echoed in coverage of the case because it underscored the gap between how quickly the case reached a courtroom and how slowly the victim’s physical recovery will likely unfold. Apodaca’s next scheduled step is an advisement hearing in Denver County Court on April 21. At that hearing, the court is expected to review the charge, bond terms and the next dates in the case. Public reporting has not identified additional charges against any other occupants of the SUV, and authorities have not publicly described whether the gun was recovered.
What has given the case unusual force is how little separated an ordinary ride through downtown from a near-fatal shooting. Francis has repeatedly said he had never seen the man before and could not explain why he was targeted. He told one station, “I don’t even understand why it happened to me.” That sense of randomness has run through both the police account and the victim’s own description of the night. The confrontation was brief, the setting was a major downtown intersection, and the accused was in custody within about half an hour. Yet the simple facts of speed and public visibility have not answered the hardest questions. Police have not publicly explained whether the shooting was part of a broader pattern of confrontations that night or only a sudden burst of violence from one vehicle. Francis, meanwhile, has kept returning to the same point in interviews: he was trying to get across town, saw a disturbance at one light, tried to avoid it, and ended the night in an ambulance.
As of Friday, Apodaca remains charged with attempted first-degree murder and is scheduled to return to court April 21, while Francis continues recovering from the wound that turned a late-night scooter ride through downtown Denver into a criminal case now moving through county court.
Author note: Last updated April 17, 2026.