Sept. 3, 2026Updated Sept. 4, 2026, 12:46 a.m. ET
- A former security guard owed $12 million by Shilo Sanders collapsed in court after testifying in Sanders’ bankruptcy trial.
- Sanders is attempting to discharge an $11.89 million judgment awarded to the guard, John Darjean, for a 2015 assault.
- A witness for Sanders gave testimony that contradicted a recorded phone call from the day of the incident.
DENVER — The former school security guard who is owed $12 million from Deion Sanders’ son Shilo collapsed in court and was taken to the hospital by ambulance after completing his testimony in Shilo Sanders’ bankruptcy trial here Thursday, Sept. 3.
The former security guard, John Darjean, testified again for more than two hours in the case against Sanders Thursday before collapsing in pain at the end of his testimony. He was released from the hospital later in the day. But the incident marked another dramatic turn in the case, where Sanders is trying to break free from the $11.89 million judgment he owes Darjean stemming from an incident at Sanders’ school in Dallas in 2015.
This was Day 4 of the trial, and it included a witness who didn’t work out so well for Sanders, along with police and medical reports from the incident that day.
Judge Michael Romero also released Deion Sanders from having to testify on the last day of the trial Friday, one day after the Colorado football coach opened the season at Georgia Tech. His testimony was deemed unnecessary after Day 4.
“He is released,” Romero said Thursday about Deion Sanders.
John Darjean’s health becomes an issue at this bankruptcy trial
Darjean, 50, did not return to the trial after being taken to the hospital. Darjean is the plaintiff and creditor in the case who sued Shilo Sanders in 2016, accusing Sanders of assaulting him and permanently injuring him when Darjean tried to confiscate Sanders’ phone at school on Sept. 17, 2015, when Sanders was 15. Darjean has claimed the attack by Sanders aggravated a previous spinal injury and worsened his health challenges, which include incontinence, nerve damage, more spinal surgeries and ongoing pain.
His pain was evident again on the witness stand before he collapsed. But before he did, Sanders’ attorney, Victor Vital, suggested his health issues predated the 2015 incident, including a diagnosis of degenerative disc disease.
“Did you possibly run into a wall playing baseball and it caused the degeneration disc disease?” Vital asked Darjean, a former minor-league baseball player.
The judge then cut off that line of questioning since causation of Darjean’s injuries is not at issue in this trial.
Witness for Shilo Sanders gives contradictory testimony
Darjean’s lawsuit ended when Darjean won an $11.89 million default judgment against Shilo Sanders after Sanders didn’t show up for the trial in Texas in 2022. The former Colorado football player now is trying to get out of that debt in bankruptcy court and on Thursday called a witness to help challenge Darjean’s version of events.
The witness, Ruda Nash James, worked as an administrator at the school on the day of the incident in 2015. She testified Thursday she saw Darjean choking Sanders, a description that would match what Shilo Sanders also testified.
But then Darjean’s attorney, Ori Raphael, played a recorded phone call between Sanders’ mother Pilar and James on the day of the incident.
“Did you see his hand around Shilo’s neck?” Pilar Sanders asked James on the call.
“I didn’t see the neck part,” James replied. “I didn’t see all that.”
James confirmed her lodging and travel to testify at the trial were being paid for by the law firm representing Sanders. She said it wouldn’t affect her testimony and didn’t know the “context” of why said she gave a different account of what she saw the day of the incident.
Police, medical reports shown from incident
Darjean’s attorneys showed contemporaneous police and medical reports at the trial Thursday that corroborated Darjean’s version of events, though Sanders’ attorney noted they didn’t completely match it.
In the police report from that day, it cited the incident as an assault with serious bodily injury with Shilo Sanders listed as the suspect. Darjean claimed Sanders swung a roundhouse elbow into his neck area.
But Vital, Sanders’ attorney noted the reports didn’t mention any alleged punches from Shilo Sanders, as Darjean has since testified as being part of three strikes he sustained from Sanders that day – an elbow and two punches near the face.
“Did it say punches?” Vital asked Darjean.
“No, because I was in severe pain,” Darjean replied.
Public records don’t reveal what happened as a result of the police report because Shilo was a minor at the time. Court records show Shilo Sanders was taken to a juvenile facility the next day after a separate incident at the school.
No police report filed against John Darjean
By contrast, Shilo Sanders testified this week he doesn’t recall if he ever filed a police report or sought help from a doctor after the incident despite saying it was Darjean who attacked him, choked him, made him black out, made him hit his head hard and started tearing the skin off his arm when he grabbed him.
Sanders testified he “did nothing” to Darjean, contradicting the testimony of several other witnesses at same trial and the findings of the Texas state court in 2022.
Darjean was taken to a hospital by ambulance after the incident, while Shilo Sanders walked away without any apparent visible injuries except for marks on his arms and neck that he testified he personally photographed that day.
Four days after the incident, on Sept. 21, 2015, an ambulance arrived at Darjean’s residence and found him lying on his dining room floor “in distress,” according to a report of the incident shown in court Thursday. Darjean testified he was taken to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery. He said the pain he experienced then was “11” on a scale of 10.
Darjean is contesting Shilo Sanders’ attempt to free himself from the judgment in bankruptcy court, arguing Sanders should not be allowed to do that because it stems from a “willful and malicious injury” – a specific exception to debt discharges under bankruptcy law.
In his defense, Sanders says he didn’t strike Darjean at all and instead was the victim of Darjean’s attack on him.
After the trial, the judge will decide whom to believe based on a preponderance of the evidence.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com