Prosecutors now say a 2022 Englewood death belongs in the same violent history that later produced three more homicide cases in the Denver area.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Colorado prosecutors have filed a fourth homicide charge against Ricky Lee Roybal-Smith, accusing him in the 2022 death of Meg Eberhart after he had already been charged in three killings from a 2025 crime spree in Aurora and Denver.

The new charge matters because it turns what had been viewed as a separate, unresolved death into the earliest known killing now tied to a defendant already under intense scrutiny over parole decisions, risk scoring and jail supervision. Roybal-Smith, 38, had been on parole when Eberhart was attacked in Englewood, and he was back on parole again in January 2025 before authorities say he killed two men in Aurora and a cellmate in the Denver jail.

Prosecutors in Arapahoe County filed the latest case on Feb. 25, nearly four years after Eberhart was found unconscious at a light-rail station in Englewood. Investigators say she had been riding in a Lyft shortly after 3 a.m. on June 22, 2022, when she got out near the station to use the restroom. Her driver later told police he heard her scream and believed a man outside had knocked her out. Officers found her unresponsive and she died days later at a hospital. For years, the case stalled after her manner of death was not firmly resolved in a way that supported an immediate homicide filing. Englewood police said after the new charge that detectives had worked for years to keep building the case and seek answers for Eberhart’s family.

The filing adds a new starting point to a case that had already become one of the Denver area’s most closely watched homicide matters. Authorities say Roybal-Smith killed Jesse Shafer, 27, and Scott Davenport, 61, in Aurora during the early morning hours of June 29, 2025. Police said Shafer was found on Moline Street after a stabbing reported at about 1:45 a.m. and Davenport was later found near a bus stop on Peoria Street south of East Colfax Avenue. Officials have said both men were homeless. Coroner findings later cited in news reports said Shafer had been stabbed about 15 times and Davenport about 90 times in the back. Later that same day, Roybal-Smith was arrested in Denver in a hit-and-run involving pedestrians near Galapago Street and West 9th Avenue.

The violence did not stop after the arrest, according to police. Roybal-Smith was booked into jail at about 11 p.m. on June 29, and by about 2:15 a.m. the next morning deputies were called to help his cellmate, Vincent Chacon, 36. Early accounts suggested choking, but investigators later concluded Chacon died from strangulation. That death brought a third homicide case and widened the fallout beyond street violence to jail operations. Chacon had been in custody on a lower-level matter and his family publicly questioned why he was housed with Roybal-Smith at all. Those concerns became part of a broader public argument over how officials assessed risk at several stages, from parole to detention placement.

The earlier Englewood case also drew attention because it came one day after another violent episode. Roybal-Smith had been charged with threatening customers at an Englewood Walmart on June 21, 2022, and later received a four-year prison sentence in that case. He did not serve the full term before becoming eligible for parole in 2025. Reporting on his correctional record found that the Colorado Department of Corrections had long classified him as a very high risk for recidivism before a later assessment marked him as moderate risk. Investigative reporting said errors appeared in the scoring process. State officials have not publicly answered every question about how those scores changed, and some details about the internal decision-making remain unknown.

What happens next will now unfold in multiple courts and counties. The Englewood case carries a second-degree murder charge in Arapahoe County. The Aurora killings led to first-degree murder charges, and the Denver jail death produced another homicide case. Each matter has its own evidence, venue and timeline, but together they have sharpened questions about whether warning signs were missed long before the latest filings. Police agencies in Englewood, Aurora and Denver have each described extensive investigative work, while prosecutors will have to prove that the incidents are legally distinct cases rather than a story connected only by the same defendant’s name.

The human weight of the case has remained visible in every new filing. Eberhart’s relatives spent years without a murder charge. Families of the 2025 victims faced a burst of violent allegations in less than two days. Chacon’s mother said after her son’s death that the family first got word he had been released, then learned instead that he had died. Investigators, meanwhile, have pointed to hard evidence, timelines and autopsy findings rather than broad explanations. That leaves a public record heavy on violence and official chronology, but still incomplete on one key question: how many off-ramps existed before four homicide cases were on the books.

Prosecutors have turned the 2022 Englewood death into an active murder prosecution, and the next major developments are expected to come through court hearings in the separate county cases.

Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.