Denver police have arrested an accountant for a shooting at a park on Sunday that left one person wounded.
A 28-year-old man named Ryan Egelston reportedly engaged in an argument with another man at a park bench. Egelston claimed that he believed the man was a pedophile and wanted to touch him, leading to a confrontation. He admitted to spitting, pushing, and possibly punching the man before firing a shot that struck the victim’s bicycle.
Subsequently, Egelston allegedly shot another person without any apparent reason, causing severe injuries to the victim’s neck and jaw. Despite the injuries, the victim is expected to recover from the incident.
Egelston told police he believed the people he shot at “were somehow involved in psy-ops.”
According to witnesses, the suspected shooter left the scene in a red vehicle. Law enforcement officers located the vehicle and initiated a traffic stop, but the driver tried to escape. Ultimately, officers executed a PIT maneuver to halt the vehicle and apprehend the suspect.
Police found a handgun in the rear seat. Egelston, who says on his website he is a “certified joy enthusiast” with a “deep passion to preach and teach the Word of God,” was charged with attempted murder.
Egelston appeared on the Christian Kingdom Crossroads podcast last March espousing his views that artificial intelligence was bringing about the end times
“His views were to the extreme, I guess you could say,” Robert Thibodeau, host of the podcoast, told KUSA. “But at the same time, they were his views, and I was asking questions.”
Thibodeau said the shooting surprised him, however.
