In the summer of 2017, a Boulder croquet party intertwined the fates of two strangers. Later that night, one of those men lost his life. Two years later, the other found out he would spend the rest of his in prison.

Louis Sebastian was found guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Christopher King in a downtown Boulder restaurant, as a Boulder County jury on Friday came to a conclusion Sebastian’s actions that night were not self-defense.

Sebastian, 33, did not react as Boulder District Judge Andrew Hartman read the verdict at 11 a.m. Friday following about five hours of jury deliberation over two days. Sebastian also was convicted of unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.

Immediately following the verdict, Hartman sentenced Sebastian to the mandatory life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole on the first-degree murder count. He also sentenced Sebastian to 634 days time served on the concealed weapons charge before Sebastian was led out of the courtroom by deputies.

King’s family members were not able to make it to the trial, but Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty called them shortly after the verdict was read.

“Obviously we’re very pleased for the victim’s family that the jury came back with a guilty verdict, and we’re grateful to the jury for their service,” said Dougherty, who tried the case along with Deputy District Attorney Mark Grimaldi. “On May 29, 2017, the defendant stole Christopher King from this world and terrorized people inside the Bramble & Hare. So many of the people in the Bramble & Hare responded and did everything they could to help the victim and also to subdue the defendant.”

Defense attorney Benjamin Collett declined to comment on the verdict Friday.

Hartman appointed alternate defense counsel to Sebastian for the purposes of any appeal of his case.

Police say Sebastian and King got into an argument at the Bramble & Hare, 1970 13th St., on May 29, 2017 before the two then went outside. Shortly after that gunshots rang out, and King came back inside the restaurant, where Sebastian followed and fatally shot him.

An employee of the restaurant was able to disarm Sebastian before police arrived to take him into custody.

The coroner’s office said King was shot four times — twice in the torso, once in the thigh and another time in the shoulder — and grazed by a bullet across his front groin area.

Sebastian and King did not previously know each other, but other witnesses from the ill-fated croquet party said the two might have been fighting over a woman at the party as well as the dinner bill.

The nearly two weeks of testimony centered on the debate about whether Sebastian’s actions were self-defense or murder, with even Sebastian himself taking the stand during the trial and claiming King attacked him and shoved him into a tree guard.

But in his closing arguments on Thursday, Dougherty keyed in on the final shot Sebastian took at King when he was on the ground inside the restaurant. One of the jurors, who talked with the Daily Camera following the verdict, said the jury took their time in going over all the evidence thoroughly but said that final shot was a key factor in the verdict.

“That fundamentally was really the deciding point,” said the juror, who asked to remain anonymous. “His deliberate act to follow him into the restaurant, look for the victim, look him in the eye and shoot again.”

In addition, the juror said Sebastian’s testimony did not help his case.

“At least for me, some of his testimony was contradicted by other witnesses, and we couldn’t put a lot of trust in his testimony.”

Another juror who asked to remain anonymous said Sebastian’s own testimony helped sway things against his favor and said, “It was fairly unanimous from the beginning.”

“There were a lot of inconsistencies with his testimony,” the juror said. “There were a lot of things he said that made it into our discussion.”

Dougherty credited the officers and detectives who built the case and collected evidence.

“The Boulder Police Department did an absolutely incredible job of responding to this incident and investigating this case,” Dougherty said. “We would not have been able to obtain this verdict without our partnership with the Boulder Police Department.

Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars