Marqueil Deandre Banks, charged in the shooting deaths of teenage brothers Damian and Dillon Wikoff, was in court the week of March 14 for a Reverse Transfer Hearing.
Banks, now 17, was 16 years old and on parole from another case at the time of the incident.
He is being charged with four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated robbery, possession of a weapon by a previous offender, possession of a handgun by a juvenile-second offense and two violent crime counts.
A Reverse Transfer hearing is held to determine if a juvenile charged as an adult should have their case sent back to juvenile court. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys were allowed to call witnesses and present evidence during the proceedings. Relatives of the Wikoff brothers, including their oldest sister, gave emotional testimony about the loss of the victims in the case.
After wrapping up the hearing in three days, Judge Robert Lochary, granted a request from the defense to provide written closing arguments instead of a verbal closing. He ordered both sides to submit their written closing arguments by 5 p.m. April 4, dispensing with the usual back and forth process where a rebuttal allowed. The judge will make his ruling on the Reverse Transfer in a status hearing at 1 p.m. May 12.
Charges against Banks stem from an August 2020 shooting in the parking lot of a Lakewood Walmart store.
Banks is accused of being the shooter in a double homicide that took the lives of Damian Wikoff, 18, and his younger brother, 17-year-old Dillon Wikoff, in an alleged gun deal gone wrong. According to preliminary hearing testimony in the case, the Wikoff brothers were said to have met up with Banks and 17-year-old Michael Anthony Mendoza, (along with other teens who have been charged as juveniles and can’t be named) at the Walmart parking lot at 7455 West Colfax Avenue, to sell a homemade ‘ghost gun’ they assembled from a kit they purchased online.
The next hearing connected to the Wikoff homicides will be an April 25, status hearing for Mendoza.