Key Takeaways
- Shilo Sanders maintains he “did nothing” to John Darjean and says the former school security guard attacked and choked him during their 2015 confrontation.
- Darjean, who won an $11.89 million default judgment against Sanders, collapsed after testifying for more than two hours in the bankruptcy trial and left the Denver courthouse by ambulance.
- The judge must decide whether the debt stems from a “willful and malicious injury,” which would prevent Sanders from discharging it through bankruptcy.
Shilo Sanders' nearly $12 million bankruptcy fight took a startling turn on Thursday, September 3, when creditor John Darjean collapsed in court shortly after spending more than two hours on the witness stand.
According to USA Today, Darjean, the former school security guard who won an $11.89 million judgment against Sanders over a 2015 confrontation, collapsed in pain after completing his testimony and was transported from the Denver courthouse by ambulance. He did not return to the proceedings but was released from the hospital later that day.
Darjean's physical condition isn't incidental to the decade-long dispute. He claims the confrontation with Sanders, who was 15 at the time, aggravated an existing spinal injury and ultimately left him dealing with nerve damage, incontinence, additional surgeries and chronic pain.
Sanders tells a dramatically different story, maintaining that Darjean attacked and choked him during an attempt to take his phone and that he never struck the security guard.
Sanders' attorney Victor Vital pressed Darjean about health problems that existed before the encounter, including degenerative disc disease, before the judge stopped that line of questioning because the cause of Darjean's injuries isn't being decided in the bankruptcy trial.
Another witness created problems of her own. Former school administrator Ruda Nash James testified that she saw Darjean choking Sanders, supporting Sanders' version of the confrontation.
But Darjean's attorney Ori Raphael confronted James with a recorded phone conversation from the day it happened. “Did you see his hand around Shilo's neck?” Sanders' mother, Pilar, asked her. “I didn't see the neck part,” James responded at the time. “I didn't see all that.”
James couldn't explain the conflicting accounts, saying she didn't know the “context” of her earlier remarks.
A police report from the day of the confrontation classified it as an assault with serious bodily injury and named Sanders as the suspect. Darjean said Sanders hit him with an elbow and two punches, although Vital pointed out that the contemporaneous report didn't mention the punches.
Four days later, an ambulance found Darjean lying on his dining room floor “in distress.” Darjean testified that he was hospitalized and underwent emergency surgery.
The $11.89 million judgment came years later. Darjean sued Sanders in 2016 and ultimately secured a default judgment in 2022 after Sanders failed to appear for the Texas trial.
Sanders is now attempting to discharge that debt through bankruptcy, while Darjean argues it resulted from a “willful and malicious injury”—a distinction that could prevent Sanders from escaping the judgment.
Sanders, meanwhile, testified this week that he “did nothing” to Darjean and maintains that he was the one attacked.
That leaves U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Romero with two sharply conflicting versions of a confrontation that happened when Sanders was still a teenager—and a judgment now approaching $12 million. Once the trial concludes, the judge will weigh the evidence under the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard and decide whether Darjean's judgment can be discharged.
