The investigation shifted quickly after two people told police Kevin Wells had acknowledged shooting his girlfriend, Lisa West.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — At about 11:35 a.m. on May 13, 2025, Kevin Wells called 911 to report that someone was trying to enter his Colorado Springs apartment. Roughly five hours later, he was in custody after police found his girlfriend dead, received reports that he had admitted shooting her and tracked his movement south.
The tightly spaced sequence of calls and police activity became the opening chapter of a murder case that took more than a year to reach a jury. Officers who responded to the Mountain Shadows Apartments found Lisa West dead from a gunshot wound, despite Wells’ report directing them toward a possible burglary. His father contacted authorities about half an hour after the initial 911 call and said Wells had confessed. Wells’ employer later reported receiving a similar admission by text. Investigators searched the apartment, traced Wells’ phone and coordinated with other law enforcement agencies. On Sept. 25, 2026, an El Paso County jury convicted Wells of murder. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 20.
Wells’ 911 call set the first clock running. According to arrest papers cited by KKTV, he said an unknown person was trying to break into the apartment and told the dispatcher that he was elsewhere while his girlfriend remained inside. Police were sent to Fontmore Road for a possible burglary at approximately 11:36 a.m. At a later preliminary hearing, Colorado Springs Officer Tyler Bresson said the apartment’s exterior did not appear suspicious when he arrived. What officers encountered inside transformed the call into a homicide investigation: West had been fatally shot.
Then came a second call that changed the direction of the investigation. Around noon, Wells’ father contacted police and said his son had told him that he shot his girlfriend, according to The Gazette’s account of the arrest affidavit. The father later said Wells described a dispute in which West had struck him and threatened to bring other people to the apartment. Wells allegedly said he told her to leave and shot her when she did not. His father told officers that he urged Wells to turn himself in. That report gave police an account naming the person responsible only about 30 minutes after Wells had attributed the emergency to a possible intruder.
A third report followed that afternoon. Wells’ employer contacted police at about 1:15 p.m. and said Wells had sent a message stating that he shot his girlfriend. Police now had two people, independent of one another in the public record, reporting that Wells had acknowledged the shooting. The new information arrived while officers were still processing an apartment where the initial 911 caller had described a break-in. Court documents cited in later reports said Wells also made statements to his father indicating that he knew the shooting had placed his future in jeopardy.
At the apartment, investigators began collecting physical evidence and looking more closely at the scene Wells had described. Detective Ashton Lofgreen testified during the July 2025 preliminary hearing that a search uncovered multiple bullet casings, an empty handgun safe and a shattered sliding glass door. The broken glass was significant because a damaged entry point could appear consistent with an intrusion, but public reporting on the hearing does not establish by itself how or when that damage occurred. Investigators treated the apartment as a homicide scene and compared what they found there with the statements being relayed by Wells’ father and employer.
Meanwhile, Wells was away from the residence. Colorado State Patrol Trooper Mathew Tillman later testified that authorities asked troopers to look for Wells’ vehicle. During police contact that day, Wells initially said he was heading toward Denver and then corrected himself to say he was in Monument, according to testimony reported by The Gazette. Cellphone information showed him traveling south. Law enforcement ultimately located him roughly 60 miles from his residence and took him into custody. Tillman said Wells cooperated with the arrest.
Investigators also began reconstructing what had happened before those calls began. At Wells’ preliminary hearing, lead Detective Shelby Johnson testified that West had texted a friend on the day she was killed and said she wanted to leave Wells. “I wish I could leave, but I literally have nowhere to go and no money,” West wrote, according to testimony. Prosecutors described a history of domestic violence and said West wanted to leave because Wells was abusive. The message created a time-stamped view of the relationship from West’s perspective before the police dispatch, reported admissions and manhunt unfolded.
Other testimony helped define the circumstances inside the home. Lofgreen said Wells alone was listed on the lease and was the only resident listed as paying utilities. West had tried to be added as a roommate but had been denied, according to the detective. Those facts did not decide who fired the shot, but they supplied context for West’s statement that she lacked a place to go and money to leave. They also gave prosecutors additional evidence about the couple’s domestic situation as the state prepared its murder case.
The preliminary hearing also exposed an issue the defense could use against the prosecution’s reconstruction. Under cross-examination, Johnson acknowledged that a witness reported seeing a “suspicious person” at the complex the morning of West’s death. Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had not shown the premeditation necessary to bind a first-degree murder charge over for trial. Judge Amanda Philipps allowed the case to proceed but acknowledged that her ruling came under the more limited legal standard used at a preliminary hearing. That decision did not amount to a finding of guilt and did not eliminate the defense’s ability to contest the state’s evidence later.
From that point, the case moved on a much slower clock. Wells remained the defendant in a murder prosecution while attorneys prepared for trial and the evidence moved from investigation to courtroom presentation. More than a year passed between the preliminary hearing and the September 2026 verdict. The most detailed public accounts reviewed for this story concern the initial investigation and the preliminary hearing, while reports on the trial verdict itself are comparatively brief. They do not provide a full transcript showing which exhibits or witnesses the jury ultimately found most persuasive.
What the verdict reports do establish is the result. KKTV reported on Sept. 25 that Wells had been convicted of murder by an El Paso County jury. That outcome replaced the uncertainty that governed the earlier stages of the case. Details such as West’s text, the reported sighting of another person, the condition of the apartment and the statements attributed to Wells had previously been parts of an accusation to be tested. The jury’s verdict established Wells’ criminal responsibility for West’s killing under the charge presented at trial.
The case’s unusual investigative arc remained central even after conviction because the first police contact came from Wells himself. In less than an afternoon, the same law enforcement response moved from a reported burglary to the discovery of West’s body, to reported admissions from Wells’ father and employer, and finally to a search for Wells outside Colorado Springs. That progression did not by itself substitute for the trial process that followed, but it explains why investigators stopped treating the case as the unknown-intruder emergency described in the original call.
As of Nov. 9, Wells remains between verdict and sentencing. Reports reviewed for this story continue to list Nov. 20 as his scheduled sentencing date, with no confirmed change. The hearing will mark the next court action in a case whose decisive investigative developments unfolded over a matter of hours but whose final jury determination came 16 months later.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 9, 2026.