DENVER – The federal judge in charge of the bankruptcy trial of Deion Sanders’ son Shilo interrupted testimony last week to address the biggest mystery in the case:
Where is the surveillance video that allegedly shows Shilo Sanders assaulting a security guard at his school in 2015?
The security guard, John Darjean, previously accused current Colorado football coach Deion Sanders of arranging to have this video footage destroyed 11 years ago because it was damning evidence against his son.
Deion Sanders himself previously testified in a pretrial deposition he used a back-channel contact at the school who “manipulated and got us the video.” He confirmed then that he obtained surveillance footage “on the down low” by email soon after the incident,
but it’s not clear what he saw.
Then the subject came up at the bankruptcy trial in Denver from Aug. 31 to Sept. 4.
“It just appears real obvious that there is some missing video that no one seems to have been able to find,” Judge Michael E. Romero said at the trial.
It was a question that hung over the trial as Shilo Sanders seeks to erase the $11.89 million civil court judgment he owes to Darjean because of this incident in Dallas. No verdict is expected until November or later.
In the meantime, the judge must make a decision about a 2015 altercation that lasted only several seconds and once was captured on camera until that video evidence apparently disappeared. More than $11 million remains at stake based on what the missing video might have showed or what witnesses remembered from it, all while Darjean still claims Deion Sanders’ fingerprints were all over it.
“That was the video that was stolen,” Darjean testified at the trial.
What is the significance of this missing Shilo Sanders video?
Only two other camera angles of the incident still exist. Both only show a small portion of the incident and are inconclusive. Both also were published by TMZ in 2016.
One of those two angles is from the school gym and shows the very beginning of the encounter between Shilo Sanders and Darjean, who sued Sanders in 2016 claiming he was assaulted and permanently injured by Sanders when he tried to confiscate Sanders’ phone.
The other existing angle shows the end of the encounter from a camera in a school lobby, where the blurry footage shows Sanders in a scuffle in the upper right corner.
The missing video allegedly captured what happened in those several seconds in between the two existing angles.
It’s the heart of this case. That’s when Darjean said then-15-year-old Sanders swung a roundhouse left elbow into his neck area and then punched him near his face. In this defense, Sanders said he was the victim, not Darjean, and that Darjean “choke-slammed” him, caused him to black out and started tearing the skin off his arm when he grabbed him.
Who’s telling the truth? Two witnesses at the trial testified they saw a third camera angle at the school, Focus Learning Academy. Both said it showed Sanders striking Darjean.
“I could see a broader view (than the two existing angles),” school administrator Lynn Gray testified.
“You’re saying there’s more video?” asked Darjean’s attorney, Ori Raphael.
“Absolutely,” Gray replied.
What the witnesses said they saw on the missing video
Another witness, Dana Hamilton, served as an attorney for the school and was charged with investigating the incident after it happened. She testified she saw surveillance footage from a camera that showed “deeper into the gym” with a “good view of the lobby and front door” near where the incident happened, quite unlike the two existing camera angles.
“It was a constant struggle,” Hamilton testified about what she saw on this other camera angle. “John was pretty intent on just holding on to him, and Shilo was moving around a lot. And that’s how his elbow struck John in the chest.”
Hamilton later drafted a letter to Darjean from the school that said “video evidence supports your statement … You were struck in the upper chest area by the student’s elbow.”
Gray, who also testified about a third camera angle, said she saw Shilo Sanders strike Darjean in a manner that was like “boom, boom.”
“I don’t know if it was a fist, a forearm, an elbow,” Gray testified. “I’m not sure what it was. But the backside of John, you could see him, he appeared to be caught off-guard.”
It was Gray’s testimony on Day 2 of the five-day bankruptcy trial that caused the judge to address this missing evidence.
What the judge in Shilo Sanders trial said about the missing video
The judge is trying to determine if Shilo Sanders’ debt to Darjean stems from a “willful and malicious injury” based upon a preponderance of the evidence. If the judge determines it does stem from that, Sanders will remain in debt to Darjean for the $11.89 million default judgment that Darjean won against Sanders at a different trial in a state court in Texas in 2022.
Shilo Sanders, a former Colorado football safety, didn’t show up for the trial in 2022 but filed for bankruptcy in 2023 in hopes of breaking free from that judgment. He could do so if the judge determines the debt does not stem from a willful and malicious injury – which is a specific exception to discharging debt under bankruptcy law.
“There appears to be a third video out there that is missing,” the judge said at the trial.
Sanders’ attorney, Victor Vital, acknowledged that witnesses testified of “watching a different angle.”
The judge replied this missing angle seemed to be “a totally different angle that shows a lot more than the two (other angles).”
“That’s what they’re saying, but I have scoured the file I received from counsel and I’ve never received it,” Vital said. “There are allegations regarding why it is missing, if it ever existed, but it’s clear, I agree with Your Honor, that these witnesses were saying they looked at another angle. I just can’t affirm that to be the case.”
What did Deion Sanders say about the video footage?
Deion Sanders didn’t testify at the recent bankruptcy trial, but he did testify about it in Darjean’s previous lawsuit against Shilo Sanders in Texas. He said he tried to obtain video footage of the incident soon afterward.
“I know head of security wasn’t gonna give me the video,” Sanders testified in the previous pretrial deposition.
An attorney asked him who that was.
“I have no idea, but whoever it was, they weren’t gonna give me the video,” Sanders testified. “I forgot who, someone slipped and gave, not slipped, but they manipulated and gave us the video. That’s how we got our hands on the video. It’s not like the school provided the video for us.”
The attorney taking his deposition then said Sanders was making it sound like somebody gave him the video on the “down low.”
“They did,” Sanders confirmed.
It’s not clear what was on that footage or happened to it afterward.
What will the judge do about the missing video?
The judge isn’t investigating what happened to the missing video. He’s only trying to determine if Shilo Sanders’ debt stems from a willful and malicious injury. To do that, he’s relying on the “best evidence rule” if the video isn’t available to him. He’s allowed witnesses to testify about what they have seen on the video in absence of the video itself.
“The reason I’m getting into that is because the rules require best evidence,” Judge Romero said at the trial. “You have to have video unless it’s missing or can’t be found. And it appears, from what I’m hearing already, that there is a third one out there that’s just gone.”
So who was responsible for the missing Shilo Sanders video?
Deion Sanders testified in that deposition several years ago he couldn’t remember the name of the man who gave him a copy of the surveillance video footage of the incident but remembered he was a coach at the school who was terminated from the school afterward. Sanders said the man had to “slip in and get it for us.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he did it,” Deion Sanders testified then.
Darjean previously said it involved an information technology worker at the school named Erin Holmes and that Holmes provided a statement to him for his lawsuit in Texas several years ago. The statement said Holmes “mistakenly erased” certain video angles from that day in 2015.
Holmes didn’t return a message seeking comment.
Holmes' name came up once at the trial in Denver when Gray said Holmes was among the few who would have had access to the surveillance footage then.
'Dreaming of those videos'
Without the missing video footage, the bankruptcy trial in Denver last week played the other two video angles in court last week countless times, but neither shows enough to prove what really happened.
"I'll be dreaming of those videos until sometime in October," Judge Romero said at the end of the trial Sept. 4.
Final written arguments are due in the bankruptcy case in November. The judge will issue a verdict after that.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Plaintiff blames Deion Sanders for 'stolen' video in son's bankruptcy case
