Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is considering suicide or other acts of self-harm, please visit 988Colorado.com or call or text 988.
Attorneys for some of the people injured and affected when a suicidal man walked in front of a jet at the moment of takeoff now charge in a lawsuit that a woman died from injuries suffered that night on a Denver International Airport runway.
Michael Mott scaled a fence at the airport on May 8 this year and died by suicide after walking in front of a departing Frontier Airlines flight. Authorities reported 12 injuries and five people taken to the hospital. No passenger deaths were initially reported.
What the lawsuit alleges
According to attorneys for Ramos Law and Watts Law Firm, a woman named Silva Ermelinda de Cervantes died days after the incident from inhalation of smoke and other toxins from the engine fire. The Weld County Coroner’s Office said it reviewed the circumstances and determined the manner of death was natural. Her primary care clinician certified the death and attributed it to natural disease, the office said. No autopsy was performed.
Attorneys represent the woman’s daughter and her estate and dozens of other plaintiffs, including passengers and crew on the airplane.
“They were on a routine domestic flight expecting within seconds to be in the air, and instead they were forced very suddenly” into an aborted takeoff, which caused numerous injuries, said Jessica McBryant, Ramos Law’s director of complex litigation.
There was a fire and exposure to toxic fumes, and the plane was evacuated onto a runway littered with the remains of Mott, who was sucked into the engine, said McBryant.
“There’s also the profound emotional and mental distress, believing in that moment — seeing an engine on fire, smoke fill the cabin — that you’re going to die.”
Kevin J. Beaty/DenveriteThe eastern fenceline around Denver International Airport, near where Michael Mott crossed over barbed wire and walked onto a runway on May 8, 2026. Photographed on Aug. 4, 2026.
The lawsuit names Denver, four airport officials and Covenant Aviation Security, a contractor. Attorneys allege that airport personnel failed to recognize and respond to an intrusion alarm before the collision. About two minutes elapsed between Mott crossing the fence and being struck, according to the complaint.
“This incident was terrible and tragic, but it is not one that the city bears legal responsibility for. Our thoughts remain with all who were impacted by this event,” said Melissa Sisneros, the public information officer for the Denver City Attorney’s Office.
Further than the city and DIA
But the lawsuit goes further than just blaming the city, implicating state authorities and their housing contractors, following a CPR News investigation into the final months of Mott’s life.
CPR News reported in August that Mott was ordered to live in an intensive behavioral health treatment home funded by the state in the year before he died by suicide. Previously, Mott had languished in a Montezuma County jail for years because he was incompetent to proceed to trial for punching a sheriff’s deputy during a mental health crisis. The Colorado Department of Human Services struggled to restore him to competency.
Mott was eventually placed in the new Mental Health Transitional Living home program funded by CDHS, and the charges against Mott were dropped.
Attorneys plan to add CDHS, the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing as defendants. The house was funded by CDHS and licensed by the BHA.
CPR News found that the house had more than a dozen violations at the time Mott was believed to be living there. The violations centered around recordkeeping for medications and treatment plans for patients. The state said a follow-up audit on the home found that they had addressed the violations and praised the operator for making changes.
The home was operated by Oakwood Behavioral Health, which state records show is controlled by Geno Shvedov. The home is owned by his mother, Alexandra, through a Wyoming corporation. Shvedov and his mother are named as defendants. Also, Shvedov’s various companies (Hazelbrook and affiliates and Paradigm Recovery) are named. Shvedov did not respond to a request for comment.
McKenzie Lange/CPR NewsMott was ordered to live at 3658 S. Bahama St. in Aurora, operated by Oakwood Behavioral Health. May 21, 2026.
CDHS refused to provide records relating to Mott, claiming strict privacy requirements, even after someone has died. Court records obtained by CPR News placed Mott at the home in July 2025 and October 2025.
One month before Mott died by suicide, he was arrested in Colorado Springs for trespassing and was released on a personal recognizance bond. No home address is listed in the arrest records. It’s unclear how Mott got 70 miles north to the DIA runway, or where exactly he was living in the months before the suicide.
McBryant, the attorney, said they hope the lawsuit will bring about change.
“So this is 100% about us trying to do what’s right for the plaintiffs, who have been impacted by something so profound,” said McBryant. “But also for accountability for everyone that was a part of each one of these systemic issues that have now come to light.”
