He Loved This City. Then It Nearly Killed Him.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Nico Francis had spent the early part of the evening on April 3 at the First Friday ArtWalk on Santa Fe, and with friends waiting on Colfax, he grabbed a Lime scooter just after 11:30 p.m. and took what he called the scenic route.

It was a night like dozens of others for the Ohio transplant, who moved to Denver in 2020 — a man who had long been something of a downtown defender, someone who pushed back every time a friend called the area dangerous. 

“I love 16th street. I love downtown. I like just riding through there and seeing what’s going on — seeing all the people, seeing everything going on,” Francis said.

That comfort level would not survive the night.

Then something felt off 

A white SUV containing several men was on 16th Street. One of the passengers was yelling at people who were on the nearby sidewalk. The noise caught Francis’ attention, and he looked over. That’s all it took. 

“He makes eye contact with me and starts coming after me. He gets out of the car and starts walking towards me in the middle of the road saying ‘You got a problem with me, b—-? You going to do something, b—-?’ Then he pulls his gun out and says, ‘I’m going to find you later and kill you, b—-.’ Then he gets back in his car and leaves,” Francis recalled.

As he continued on, he found himself stopped beside the same white SUV at the next light. The passenger was already halfway out the window — gun still in hand. 

“My brain went on high alert,” he said.

Francis tried to defuse the situation. “Hey man. I don’t know you. I don’t have any problem with you,” he told the man. “I’m just trying to have a good night, go out, meet my friends.”

Nothing Francis said to him mattered. 

He said the car started to pull off, but the passenger didn’t pull back inside. Instead, he stayed out the window, keeping the gun aimed as they moved.

“I thought this guy was just trying to look tough,” Francis said.

That wasn’t what happened. “No. He took the shot.”

He thought to himself, “What just happened? Is this real life right now?” Running on pure instinct, he had one thought. “It was very little thinking, more like — what is the quickest thing I can do to get myself out of here?”

The therapist who knew

Alarms went off in Francis’ mind in those next moments.

“I started coughing up blood. I’m a respiratory therapist and work in the ICU. So I know what it means when someone’s coughing up blood. That means they’re in trouble. It’s an emergency. And you don’t have very long,” he explained.

His right arm wasn’t responding at all. He tried his left. “My blood was spurting out of my neck where he had shot me.” His phone was soaked. The touchscreen was rendered useless.

Francis looked around. There was no one. Then he spotted a Tesla at the red light.

For a brief moment, he felt hope. “Oh my God. I’m going to be saved. Thank God someone’s here,” he thought to himself. “I walk up to them. ‘Please call the cops. Please call 911. I’ve been shot.'” They looked at him. Then they rolled up their window and drove away. “I think they were just scared,” Francis added.

Alone on the sidewalk

Nico Francis screamed, but nobody came. 

“This is where I’m going to die. I’m going to die on the sidewalk in downtown Denver,” he thought. “I don’t know the reason why. I don’t have any control over it. There’s nobody around to help me. And I have no say in this.”

Then, he lost consciousness.

When he came back, there were hands on his neck. A homeless man — someone Francis had barely noticed before the shot was fired — had returned. At the moment the gun went off, the man had cried out, “Oh my God, he shot him. He killed him,” then ran into a nearby alley to protect himself. Then he turned around and came back anyway, his hands soon fully covered in someone else’s blood.

The man had returned and was holding pressure on his neck, preventing him from bleeding out. He cleaned off the phone. Francis made the call. “Without him, I wouldn’t have been alive. I would not have been able to call the cops. With the blood I was losing, I think I had maybe just a couple more minutes,” he said.

By the time Francis reached Denver Health, his blood pressure had dropped to an undetectable level. Doctors later told him the bullet had missed the major arteries in his neck by millimeters, traveled through his shoulder blade — shattering his scapula — and exited through his back, somehow sparing his spinal cord. “Somebody is watching over you,” his doctor told him. “You are extremely lucky.”

Side-by-side images show entry and exit wounds on Nico Francis’ neck following the April 3 shooting in downtown Denver. The photos, provided by Francis and shared publicly via Imgur, depict the extent of the injury, including visible trauma and bandaging at the wound sites.

The suspect and his bond

Anthony Apodaca was taken into custody not long after the shooting and held on an investigative hold for attempted first-degree murder. Formal charges are still pending, the DA’s office told RMV, with an April 21 advisement hearing expected.

By the second day, he had bonded out. Magistrate Mark S. Solomon set it at $75,000 surety, even as prosecutors pushed for a $100,000 cash-only bond. His release came with conditions — home confinement, GPS monitoring, and the surrender of firearms.

Graphic via DoBetterDNVR on X

Francis remained hospitalized.

“Him getting out on bond is just crazy,” Francis said. “To me, it’s still light for attempted murder.”

The man who defended downtown

Nico Francis loved downtown and was always quick to defend it. 

“All my coworkers — they’re always like, ’16th Street is so dangerous. Downtown is so dangerous. I’ll never go out there.’ And I look at them and I just think they’re being dramatic. I’m like, come on. It’s literally not that bad.” He would say to them, “Go down there, go out to dinner, enjoy yourself. I promise you’ll have a good time.”

“And then I go and I get shot in the neck in a random shooting.”

He enjoyed walking his dogs there. He had grown familiar with many of the locals. It felt safe enough. When asked if he still feels that way, his answer was, “No, and I don’t want to go back there.”

Francis made it home. But picking up where he left off isn’t an option. The nerve damage from the blast has left his right arm largely useless — he can’t brush his teeth, can’t put his hair up, can’t feed himself without help. 

Whether any of it comes back is unknown.

“I’m not able to do the things that I used to be able to do without help. And needing somebody here to help you all the time is really stressful. It’s difficult not being self-sufficient,” he said. “I can’t do anything like this for the rest of my life. For what? This guy had no motive.” He is out of work for at least a month with no clear timeline for return.

“Something needs to change”

“I wrestled in college. I’m not a small guy. I can defend myself. If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody,” Francis said. “It was totally indiscriminate. Next time, maybe they’ll pick on somebody who’s less able to defend themselves. That’s the point I want to make with this whole thing.”

He added, “I don’t want to scare people away from downtown. But something needs to change.”

“People have always told me downtown is so dangerous. And I’m like, just go enjoy it. It’s a safe place. And then I get shot in the neck. And now it’s like — do I even want to live in the city anymore? Do I want to go isolate in the mountains so I don’t have to worry about this?”

For now, those questions have no easy answers. Somewhere out there, a homeless man who turned around when everyone else drove away is living his life — not knowing that a respiratory therapist from Ohio thinks about him every single day, and just wants to sit across from him at a dinner table and say thank you.

To support Nico Francis’s recovery from medical expenses and lost wages, visit his GoFundMe at gofund.me/46f8565ca.

Nico Francis’ April 11, 2026 GoFundMe update. In a recent update, Francis said the damage is still unfolding—nerve loss in his shoulder and arm, swelling that hasn’t gone down, and trauma his body is still trying to process.

Editor’s note: Rocky Mountain Voice has requested records from the Denver Police Department and other agencies. This story will be updated as those documents are released.