Man charged with killing friend at North Tacoma home claims victim shot himself
Three men accused of fatally shooting their friend in the head at a house in Tacoma’s North End tried to convince police the 25-year-old victim killed himself.
Police were called about 1 a.m. Sunday to the 3800 block of North 21st Street and found a woman and two underage girls waiting.
The woman directed officers to her grandson’s bedroom, where Brian Cendejas was found slumped on a couch with a single gunshot wound to the head.
He was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center, where he died later that day.
Officers spotted a 9 mm shell casing in the bedroom and live rounds rounds in the hallway and living room.
There was a gun holster next to Cendejas but no weapon in sight.
The grandmother told police she’d been asleep in her bedroom and did not know what happened.
One of the underage girls said she and her friend were listening to music when they heard her brother yell, “Call 911!” before he ran out the back door.
Police determined there were three men present when Cendejas was shot.
Two of them were arrested Wednesday night as they drove away from a friend’s house in South Tacoma. The third was taken into custody hours later.
On Thursday, Pierce County prosecutors charged Niklas Nelson, 26, with first-degree manslaughter. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $75,000 bail.
The other two men have not yet been charged.
Charging papers give this account:
A witness who lives on North 21st Street told police he was out walking around 1 a.m. when he heard an argument followed by gunshots.
Moments after the shooting, Nelson and the other two ran from the house and called a friend asking for help.
The friend later told police Nelson and one of the other men arrived at his home with two guns each.
While taking the weapons apart, Nelson allegedly said Cendejas shot himself with a 9 mm handgun.
Nelson claimed his gun was sitting on a table in front of Cendejas when his friend picked it up. Nelson told him to clear the single round in the gun.
“Per Nelson, victim Cendejas then ‘put the gun to his head and pop,’” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Nelson then grabbed the “illegal stuff,” including a ball of cocaine the size of a softball, before they fled the scene.
Nelson and the other two spent the evening making jokes about “head shots” and “fake crying” while snorting lines of cocaine and trying to concoct a story about how Cendejas was shot, according to the friend.
After being arrested, one of the suspects told detectives he was playing poker on his cell phone and did not see the shooting. He allegedly heard a gunshot and saw a “casing flying through the air,” records say.
He denied any of the friends argued that night.
Detectives were able to recover the murder weapon, a 9 mm that was in several pieces.
Nelson told police the friends had been drinking when Cendejas picked up the gun, put it to his head and pulled the trigger.
“Given the autopsy findings regarding the distance between the victim’s head and the gun when it was fired, and the fact that the victim was right-handed, the evidence in this case does not support the defendant’s statement that the victim shot himself,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
Medical examiners confirmed Cendejas did not commit suicide.
They said the gun was fired at least three feet from Cendejas and a bullet struck him on the left side of his head.
If Cendejas shot himself, there would allegedly be soot or evidence of stippling found on his head. There was not.
This is Tacoma’s first homicide this year.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 3:23 PM.
