The mother of a woman killed in a dorm room at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in 2024 has filed a lawsuit against the school, alleging officials “consciously disregarded” the safety and well-being of the two killed and the campus community.

Nicholas Jordan was convicted in April for shooting and killing Celie Rain Montgomery, 26, of Pueblo, and music student Samuel Knopp, 24, of Parker, in the early morning hours of Feb. 16, 2024, in a campus dormitory. Jordan and Knopp were roommates and students at UCCS; Montgomery had been visiting Knopp.

Jordan received two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole for the murders of Knopp and Montgomery.

Melody Montgomery, Celie’s mother, claims in the lawsuit that the school was made aware of several “problematic” instances involving Jordan and failed to properly follow their own policies to address the situation before Knopp and her daughter were killed. It states the defendants knew or should have known that Jordan was a mentally distressed person with a pattern of drug abuse and could cause harm to his roommates or others. 

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The trial revealed the roommates had several disputes between December and February, with both of them sending multiple requests to school officials asking to move out or for something to be done to resolve the bad roommate situation. Campus police reportedly responded on several occasions, including one instance in January when Jordan threatened to kill Knopp over a dispute about taking out the trash.

The lawsuit goes over each situation, citing multiple times when either Knopp or Jordan had complained to school officials about each other. It claims the school’s Campus Assessment Response and Evaluation Team, which exists to handle student behavior concerns, was aware of Jordan’s conduct and discussed it on multiple occasions, but failed to take action. 

It also includes a time when another female student had accused Jordan of sexually harassing her to the point where she had to withdraw from a class. The situation prompted the Office of Institutional Equity to send an email stating that “anymore (incident reports) about similar behavior … could demonstrate a pattern for us to address,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims other reports of sexual harassment by other women were later made.

The lawsuit claims school officials neglected to exercise “reasonable care” by not evicting Jordan from the dorm room for the following reasons and more:

• Not immediately removing Jordan from the dorm after he threatened to kill Knopp in January.
• Not suspending, expelling or evicting Jordan after multiple complaints for sexual harassment were made.
• Not initiating “remedial measures” outline the CARE Team’s policies for suspension and expulsion after Jordan was reported to have “significant” drug use on campus, which is a violation of school policy, sexual harassment of female students and the threat of violence against Knopp.

During the trial, emails sent from Knopp to the UCCS housing department showed Knopp stating the issues were improving and housing did not need to kick Jordan out of the dorms, but only days later changed his mind and requested that someone “come talk some sense into him.”

University officials testified in court that they had given Knopp and his third roommate the option to move into an emergency dormitory, but the two declined it at the time. They then asked for a room change again a month later in February 2024, when it was granted. Knopp and the third roommate were set to move into the new dorm the day he was killed.  

UCCS officials declined to comment on pending litigation when The Gazette reached out to them Friday. 

The university released a 91-page independent review done by the law firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in December, which pointed to several policies, procedures and trainings that needed improvement.

Many of the recommendations from the report had been implemented or were being implemented, according to school officials at the time.

UCCS Chancellor Jennifer Sobanet stated in the report that there was no finding “that any individual at the university was responsible for a violation of police or that anyone knowingly contributed to this tragic outcome.”

Brownstein concluded the review by stating:

“A case could be made that the January 15 incident along (about which the CARE Team had timely knowledge), especially Jordan’s use use of threatened violence, should have been sufficient for the CARE Team to regard Jordan as an elevated risk. This could have then been grounds for a more aggressive and direct formal intervention.”

Melody Montgomery, who is now caring for her daughter Celie’s two children, who are 9 and 7 years old, is seeking an unspecified monetary compensation, the lawsuit states. The lawsuit also demands for a jury trial, stating “the citizens of Colorado demand answers about what happened.”