[ GAZETTE ]: Teen killed in Colorado Springs shooting remembered through love of music: ‘He lit up rooms’

Miguel Romero was a 17-year-old full of life.

A lover of music, skating and most of all — his friends, Romero was a “ball of light” in every room he walked into, his mother Erica Romero-Newell, 42, remembers.

“He was goofy, silly, funny and always willing to help others,” Romero-Newell said of her son.

On Dec. 1, his light was stolen in a shooting at a Colorado Springs apartment complex.

Erica Romero holds a photo of her son, Miguel Romero, 17, who died on Dec. 1 of a gunshot wound. Miguel loved to make music at an afterschool program at Anthem Live Studios with other young people.

Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette

“That day, because I’m a selfish mama … I had taken (work) off for the kids because I was like ‘I don’t get to spend much time with you. You guys (Romero and his 11-year-old brother) aren’t going anywhere, you’re not doing anything, you’re all mine,’” Romero-Newell said.

Eventually, Romero-Newell conceded and let her son go and see his friends that night, largely because Romero told her he “felt like he needed to be there” for a friend.

Then in the late evening hours Romero-Newell got the call from Colorado Springs police that her son had been shot and killed.

“I knew he felt uncomfortable in the situation because I was just talking to him through text message like 60 minutes before I got the call that his life had been taken,” Romero-Newell said as tears streamed down her face recalling the night of the shooting.

Everyone in Romero’s life was consistent about one thing: he was not the kind of kid to get caught up in something like that.

“It just isn’t fair,” said Ja’Rea Suggs. “We all know he wasn’t a part of that life.”

“He lit up rooms when he’d walk in,” said Samarrah Valasquez, another friend of Romero’s. “The kind of person you meet once in a lifetime.”

Friends of Miguel Romero were sharing stories about their friend at Anthem Live Studios, including O’Sias Holmes, Ja'Rea Suggs, left to right, and Samarrah Valasquez, far right.

Jerilee Bennett,The Gazette

Police confirmed that Romero’s death is being investigated as a homicide and that all parties involved are “accounted for” — but there have been no arrests.

One of many

Romero was one of 38 homicides in the city in 2024, up from 29 in 2023 and down from a record 50 in 2022, according to data from the Colorado Springs Police Department.

Less than two months into 2025 Colorado Springs has already seen nine homicides, according to the most recent press release from the city regarding the shooting death of a 16-year-old boy.

Data regarding violent crime in the city tells a different tale from the fluctuating homicide rate over the past three years.

Violent crime has been on a steady trend upward the past several years, jumping from 5,495 incidents in 2022, to 5,649 in 2023 and 5,815 in 2024, according to data from the Colorado Springs Police Department.

According to data from the FBI, the number of violent crimes known to law enforcement in 2019 in Colorado Springs was 2,806, in 2015 it was 1,983 and in 2010 it was 1,957.

A year-end study from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) echoes that Colorado Springs is seeing an increase in violent crime, while many other major American cities are seeing the opposite. From 2019 through 2024 Colorado Springs saw the biggest percentage increases in both homicides and aggravated assaults of the 29 cities included in the study.

The average city of the 29 studied saw an average decrease of 6% in homicides and an average increase of 4% in aggravated assaults over the five years of the study. Colorado Springs saw a 101% increase in homicides and a 42% increase in aggravated assault, both the highest percentage increases of any city in the study.

Jonathan Caudill, a criminal justice professor and the interim dean of the college of public service at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, said that while the data shows an undeniable rise in violent crime in Colorado Springs, the gaudy jump in percentage doesn’t tell the full story.

Caudill points to the rates in the study from the CCJ, which show that Colorado Springs still sees less violent crime than many major American cities.

According to data from the CCJ, despite the major increase in homicides and aggravated assaults in Colorado Springs, the city ended 2024 with a homicide rate of 8 per 100,000 and an aggravated assault rate of 443 per 100,000, both closer to average of the cities included in the study.

“It’s (the city’s violent crime data) striking in some respects, and in other respects, we’re in a good spot,” Caudill said. “Even though we’ve seen this huge increase in the past five years, we’re still at a really good place compared to other cities.”

Caitlin Ford Blanco, a spokeswoman with Colorado Springs police, cautioned against taking the data from the CCJ study at face value. Ford Blanco said in an email to The Gazette that the data in the CCJ study is categorized very differently from how CSPD counts its data internally, specifically in focusing on offense data, and not incident data, “which is how CSPD tracks crime.”

“This information (CCJ study) is not providing a realistic picture of how many violent crime incidents there are in the city but rather how many violent crime charges are recorded in court,” Ford told The Gazette, adding that the data from the CCJ 2024 report is “very preliminary.”

As to why Colorado Springs continues to see violent crime rise, Caudill said he can do little more than speculate, but that the growing population of the city could be a key factor, especially a potential influx of younger people.

“I think we kind of maxed out at about 28 in our propensity to commit crime or be delinquent,” Caudill said. “Somebody coming here that’s 20 years old, maybe they come as a part of the military, maybe they come to go to college, maybe they come here because they like the mountains. ... So they come (to the city) younger, maybe their brains (are) not fully developed, and maybe they don’t make the same decisions as somebody that’s 45 or 50.”

The 2020 U.S. census showed a 15% increase in the city’s population, jumping from 416,427 in 2010 to 478,961 in 2020. The city’s estimated population in 2024, according to census data, is 488,000.

According to data from the FBI that is accurate up to the end of 2023, the offender in over 42% of the aggravated assaults and over 54% of homicides from 2019-2023 in Colorado Springs was 29 years old or younger. During the same timeframe in Colorado Springs, nearly 36% of homicide victims and 43% of aggravated assault victims were 29 or younger.

Some other factors Caudill said could play a role in any city experiencing an increase in violent crime include possible increased density of the city, the economy and police staffing.

Caudill cautioned against suggesting that just adding more police officers would help fight growing violent crime in the city. When Caudill worked in Texas he performed a study on the Dallas Police Department that found that the roles officers play while on duty plays as much of a factor, if not more, than the overall number of officers in stopping crime.

“Once you control for officer activity, what they do when they’re out there, the number of officers was no longer as relevant,” Caudill said about the outcome of the study. “There’s an absolute minimum, right? You got to have at least one officer on that beat to be able to do anything. ... But what we found was it was what officers do when they’re out there that has an impact on crime, more importantly than being there.”

With violent crime continuing to rise in a city with a growing population, Romero-Newell feels like she is being left behind. She said that updates from the Police Department have been few and far between since her son’s death more than two months ago.

“I’m kind of stuck in the mud, really, with no answers,” Romero-Newell said. “I have faith in God that something will come about. But the way that they’re treating all of this makes me really discouraged that my son is actually going to get some justice.”

The Colorado Springs Police Department denied a request for an interview from The Gazette regarding violent crime data and trends in the city.

A deep connection to music

Above most things Romero loved music.

Romero-Newell recalls that she and her son would listen to artists like Usher, SZA and Luther Vandross together.

“It was really kind of odd for a kid to get into,” Romero-Newell said of her son’s music taste. “He really liked the music that you could kind of feel from your soul.”

Anthem Music Enterprises owner TerryJosiah Sharpe poses for a portrait in one of the creator sets.

Parker Siebold, The Gazette

TerryJosiah Sharpe, founder and CEO of Anthem Music Enterprises, said Romero joined their after-school program in 2024 and immediately recognized him as different from most kids his age.

“We see this young kid come in who’s fairly passive and quiet and not really saying much, but he comes in and he has a big smile, and he wants to go up to not just me as the director, but the music mentors, he’s going up to each one of them, asking them how they’re doing,” Sharpe said. “And I just thought that’s different. Most of the kids that come in, they don’t care how we’re doing. He automatically stood out, and all of us were kind of taken back a little bit like, wow, you care about us. That’s special. We don’t always get that.”

Sharpe has been running Anthem since 2019 with the goal of providing a more positive outlet for youth in the Colorado Springs community through its after-school programs and summer camp where participants learn how to make music in a professional environment.

“Through this program, what we do is we teach them how to have healthy, creative outlets,” Sharpe said. “We know how important that is, and the kids that are usually coming are the underserved, the ones that don’t really have the resources to be able to do something like this. The problem is that a lot of people see doing music, creating music, as a luxury. But I understand it to be a lifeline, and so I want to make sure that that lifeline is available for any and everybody that needs it.”

Once Romero began the program, he was hooked, Romero-Newell said.

“He always told me that no matter what, he was finding a way to get (to Anthem),” Romero-Newell said. “He loved being here so much that he was like, I will find a way to get home. … He was like, if I have to Mom, I will skate all the way home.”

After Romero, who went by the artist name Smalls, joined it wasn’t long before he had convinced a whole group of his friends to join too.

“When we first met I was a bit of a bad kid, and so was Miguel. We were not in class,” O’Sias Holmes, one of Romero’s friends, joked.

Holmes was one of several kids who joked about meeting their friend Smalls “outside of the classroom.”

But eventually, Romero convinced his friends to start showing up to Anthem to make music.

“Before I got into this program (Romero) was just telling me about his music. It felt like a deep conversation,” Abraham Thompson said. “Once he told me about Anthem, I was like, man, I’ll have to try.”

On Romero’s first day at Anthem Sharpe remembers that, like lots of young men who enter his studio, the first verse he put together was mostly about superficial things like money and cars.

“What we asked him was, OK, this is fine, but the real question is, is this the voice that you want people to hear and know for the rest of your life?” Sharpe remembers telling him afterward. “He really took that to heart.”

The verse that came after is what Sharpe said was the beginning of Romero being able to express himself through music.

“He even starts it (the verse) off by saying, ‘I saw death yesterday. Mama’s looking at me, asking why I’ve been sad,’” Sharpe said. “He really dove into himself.”

The connection between the Romero family and Anthem runs deep. When Romero was killed Anthem held a celebration of life for the family at its studio off Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs.

“We initially talked and thought maybe 50 people will come,” Sharpe said. “We ended up having about 160 people that showed up.”

With the entire studio packed with friends of Romero-Newell’s son, one thing became obvious to her: Romero was loved by many and missed by many more.

The celebration of life for Miguel Romero drew three times as many people as his family expected.

Kristen Sharpe, Anthem Music Enterprises

“The amount of kids that just came up and said so many good things about him really just showed his character outside of what I see as a mom,” Romero-Newell said. “It was really touching because you don’t think that young people will have such an impact on other young people. … I feel like Miguel really just had a soul to help people in general, but the most impact that he could make was on the kids that were surrounding him.”

In remembrance of Romero his mother and Anthem are working together to create a scholarship so that others in the community can access the programs that had such a positive influence on the 17-year-old.

More news about the scholarship is expected when the album for last year’s after-school attendees drops in March.

Romero’s song, “Survivor’s Guilt,” will be the first song on the album released.