ASHA COOPER WORRIED LIKE ANY parent would when her son, Jayden Hoyle, didn’t come home from school on April 8, 2022. But it was Friday and Cooper assumed her son was safe with friends. When the clock ticked to 9 pm, Cooper’s worry turned to panic. It was out of character for him to be out past that time without calling to reassure his mother he was okay. “I called his friends, I called the hospitals, I even called the police myself trying to see if they knew anything. And they didn’t tell me anything. I kept looking at my phone, waiting for it to ring,” Cooper said. Desperate, Cooper got in her car and started driving, tracing the path she thought Jayden might have taken home from school. In the distance, she saw blue and red police lights flashing on the Central Park bridge. But Cooper didn’t drive towards the police lights. It was not the route Jayden would have taken home from school. It seemed impossible that the pulsing lights were connected to her son, but still, they left her feeling uneasy. “I kept looking at those lights, thinking, ‘I hope that’s not for Jayden. I hope that’s not him.’ But at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was,” Copper said. Jayden was a student at Denver Green School in Northfield and an active member of People’s Presbyterian Church, where he was preparing for his Confirmation. He was outgoing and athletic, playing football, basketball, and soccer. “He was a great kid, and I know he was only going to be greater as he got older,” Cooper said. He had three older sisters, whom Cooper credits for influencing Jayden’s high emotional intelligence. He never hesitated to extend a helping hand and always steered clear of Denver community violence, frequently mourning those friends he lost to it. Instead, Jayden spent his days striving to be a good friend, brother, son, and grandson. “He was very respectful…if he saw someone carrying groceries, he would go help them. He would take his clothes and shoes to friends at school who did not have any. He would get snacks and give them to people who he knew needed them more than he did,” Cooper said. When morning broke without word from Jayden, she began calling friends, family, and hospitals once more to locate her son. It was not until mid-morning that Cooper’s world began to crack open with a call from Jayden’s sister; she had heard that Jayden and his friend Adrian Foster, 14, were killed the night before. The morning continued in a blurred panic. Cooper remembers dialing 911 and frantically begging for information, but they had none. She was en route to the Aurora jail when she got a call from the coroner’s office. “They said, ‘I think we have your son, Cashier [one of Jayden’s friends],’” Cooper said. “I said, ‘I have talked to Cashier, and he is alive, and he is not my son.’ They told me they needed me to identify the body.” Instead of allowing Cooper to enter the facility, representative had her wait on hold for 45 minutes before the sending an image to her phone. “He looked like he was just sleeping. Like if I had peaked GARDENS MILIES HEAL in his room and he was asleep. I lost it, and his dad lost it, right there in the middle of Alameda. They couldn’t tell me what had happened, just that he had passed,” said Cooper. Nearly three years later, the what-ifs from that Friday night still haunt her. “I keep going over that night in my head, wishing I had done something different, wishing I had been the one to pick him up. If I had just been able to speak with him, I wonder if things would have turned out differently,” Cooper said. April 2025 DENVER VOICE 9 TASHA COOPER LOST HER SON JAYDEN HOYLE IN 2022. VOLUNTEERING WITH GUNS TO GARDENS HAS HELPED HER PROCESS HER GRIEF AND TAKE ACTION AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE.
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