Stabbing victim's son: 'In my eyes, he died a hero'

Jacob Gardner and his father drifted apart years ago.

Still, he needed closure. So he drove from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Fort Collins on Wednesday to see the spot where his father was stabbed to death last week.

Duane Gardner, 50, died Nov. 21 in a parking lot in need of repairs just outside the lower level of an apartment complex at 715 Parker St. The day before Jacob's visit, property management workers loaded up the contents of the apartment — throwing tables, chairs, clothes, magazines and a TV into a faded blue dumpster.

The items belonged to David Strunk, the man accused of stabbing Gardner in the chest after he tried to break up an argument between Strunk and a woman.

"At least in my eyes, he died a hero,'' Jacob said. "My dad had a huge heart, and he didn't want to see that going on.''

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Jacob looked over a Chevrolet Silverado with a Broncos sticker in the back window in the parking lot and said he thinks it might have been his father's pickup. Duane was a big Broncos fan and "he was a roughneck who worked on a pipeline," Jacob said.

Jacob doesn't know what happened the night his father was killed. He's not sure why his father, who lived in Eaton, was at the apartment complex that night. He doesn't know how his father met Strunk — he only knows that the two met not long ago.

The Larimer County District Attorney has charged Strunk with first-degree murder after deliberation. He is being held without bond in the Larimer County Jail. His first appearance is scheduled for Jan. 12, and his arrest affidavit is sealed.

Online court records show Strunk has been charged in Larimer County courts on 36 occasions since 1996, including being convicted of crimes related to carrying a concealed weapon, drunken driving, assault, drug possession, domestic harassment, fighting first responders and violating bail bond conditions.

Jacob, 27, said he had not talked to nor seen his father in two years and that Duane had lived in Arizona, California, Florida and Colorado, where Jacob said he moved to "have a better relationship with his half-sister.''

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Jacob said his father was a Navy Seabee (construction battalion), a proud union member, a goofball,  and that despite the physical and emotional distance between them, he was a person of whom he still had fond memories.

"My best memory of him was when we went off-roading about eight years ago between Phoenix and Prescott,'' Jacob said. "If you drove the distance on the highway it was about an hour, but off-roading it took us about seven hours. It was so much fun.''

Jacob found some closure from Wednesday's trip to that parking lot with evidence-indicating green paint trailing from apartment C to where Duane died. And he left with one-fifth of his father's ashes, which were divvied up between family members. His grandmother will lay her share in the family plot in Farmington, New Mexico.

"It just sucks,'' Jacob said.