Murder charges filed against 27-year-old man arrested in South End shooting, police say
Tacoma police have arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with a fatal shooting in the South End.
Officers with the Tacoma Police Department responded to the shooting in the 9200 block of South Hosmer Street just before 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 27, TPD announced in a news release. Police found a man with a gunshot wound and began life-saving measures until fire personnel arrived. He died of his injuries.
Police took the defendant, Adrian Ramirez Martinez, into custody on Thursday, the department announced.
Adam Faber with the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office told The News Tribune that Ramirez Martinez appeared in court Friday afternoon. Bail has been set at $2 million, Faber noted in a subsequent email.
Prosecutors charged the defendant with second-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm while not being a U.S. citizen, court records show.
Responding officers found the victim “holding onto his chest” with a “single gunshot wound on the center of his torso,” according to the documents. The medical examiner later determined he died from the wound.
A witness told police that before the shooting, the victim had invited him out for drinks and food. They later drove around the area where the homicide would occur, records show. The victim purportedly received a call from Ramirez Martinez, who invited him to the parking lot of an apartment complex on South Hosmer Street.
No one else was in the parking lot as far as the witness could tell, documents show. He initially thought the victim and Ramirez Martinez had gotten into an argument but later added he’d heard the latter laughing as well.
The witness told authorities he did not hear what they talked about.
“When [the witness] ducked into the victim’s car to grab a phone charger, he heard the shot fired,” the prosecutor’s office wrote. “He then stood up, looked around and saw the victim holding his chest while telling him to call the police.”
The defendant then drove away in a mid-2000s gray Honda Civic, per court documents.
Later the witness told detectives that he used to live in the same apartment complex as the victim and Ramirez Martinez, records show. The three would drink together on weekends. He helped identify the defendant after detectives showed him photographs.
Ramirez Martinez is ineligible to possess a firearm, according to court documents. He was extradited to Mexico from the United States in September 2016 and banned from reentry for two decades.
Prosecutors warned ahead of the arrest that the defendant was a flight risk and could still be armed.
The Tacoma Police Department in a news release thanked its counterparts in Tukwila for assisting with the case. Police encourage people with any information to come forward and help the investigation.
This story was originally published August 2, 2024 at 2:29 PM.
