Altercation led to deadly gunfire in Pierce County neighborhood. Now 1 is sentenced
A 21-year-old man who shot a neighbor in a Spanaway cul-de-sac multiple times in what he claimed was the defense of his younger brother was sentenced Friday to eight years in the state’s custody.
Tameron Nelson Rodriguez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Pierce County Superior Court for the July 5, 2023 killing of 23-year-old David Kady. The punishment Judge Philip Thornton imposed was below the standard sentencing range of about 10-18 years of incarceration.
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Adam Faber said Monday that Rodriguez would go to the custody of the Department of Children, Youth and Families. The defendant was 19 when the shooting occurred. He had no prior criminal history.
Rodriguez’s defense attorney, Michael Stewart, told The News Tribune on Tuesday that Thornton found mitigating circumstances to support a sentence below the standard range. Specifically, Stewart said Thornton found a preponderance of the evidence established that “to a significant degree, the victim was an initiator, willing participant, aggressor, or provoker of the incident.” Stewart said the court also departed from the standard range based on defense of others and the mitigating factors of youth.
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence at the high end of the range. In a sentencing memorandum, deputy prosecuting attorney Matthew Thomas wrote that was warranted because Rodriguez drew a firearm and pursued Kady before shooting him at least three times in the side and back.
Rodriguez’s younger brother was pepper-sprayed by Kady during the incident, but prosecutors said Rodriguez approached Kady, produced a gun, fired a shot and then chased him before the spray was used.
Stewart wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Kady was assaulting the defendant’s brother when he was shot, and a knife and pepper spray were found by his body.
The defense attorney also detailed several prior contacts between Rodriguez, his younger brother and Kady between 2020 and 2022. Those included Kady threatening to stab Rodriguez and a fist fight between Kady, the brother and his friends that left Kady’s knuckles bruised and his tooth chipped.
The shooting occurred in the 1800 block of 187th Street Court East. According to court records, the defendant’s younger brother was sitting in a lawn chair at the end of their driveway shortly before 1 a.m. when Kady approached him from the street.
Rodriguez was also outside, and a security camera on his family’s house showed him position himself behind a column on the porch and remove a gun from a cross-body bag he was wearing. According to prosecutors, the brother stood up, and Kady started walking away from him. That’s when Rodriguez walked into the driveway with his gun in hand.
Twelve seconds later, Rodriguez fired a shot, and a second burst of gunfire came 3-4 seconds later. According to court filings from the prosecution and the defense, Kady deployed pepper spray in those intervening seconds.
When the second burst of gunfire happened, according to prosecutors, Kady was retreating down the street while Rodriguez and his brother followed him.
Stewart wrote in a sentencing memorandum that when Kady first approached Rodriguez’s brother, Kady said something, and the brother stood up and told him to leave while the man taunted him. While the two argued, Stewart said Rodriguez took out a gun he had for personal protection.
Kady then threatened to “shank” the younger brother, according to Stewart, and Rodriguez fired a warning shot into the air. Rodriguez moved into the street to make sure Kady was leaving when he saw the man reach for his waistband and then pepper-spray his brother.
“Tameron saw [his brother] immediately react to the assault,” Stewart wrote. “Tameron fired his weapon in his brother’s defense. Mr. Kady dropped to the ground.”
Rodriguez followed his brother back to his family’s house and then ran out of the neighborhood, according to Stewart. He turned himself into authorities two days later.
Kady was struck with four bullets including in the neck, lower back and shoulder, according to prosecutors. His parents spoke at Rodriguez’s sentencing hearing Friday. In a victim-impact statement also filed with the court, Ken Kady said David was his only child, and his tragic death had caused great suffering.
“He simply wanted to walk safely through his own neighborhood,” Kady wrote. “The suffering is immense.”
In other news out of Superior Court:
Man found guilty of domestic-violence murder in University Place
A 43-year-old man charged with fatally shooting his 10-year-old son’s mother in University Place in the midst of custody issues has been convicted of first-degree murder in a jury trial.
Duane Dushon Moore was accused of killing Kayla Vallee, 40, on Dec. 9, 2023 in an apartment complex in the 7300 block of 56th Street Court West.
According to court records, the trial stretched over two weeks and concluded March 24. The jury began deliberations the next day and reached a verdict the morning of March 26. Aside from the murder conviction, jurors also returned special verdicts finding that Vallee and Moore were intimate partners, that Moore was armed with a firearm when he committed the crime and that it was an aggravated domestic-violence offense.
Moore is to be sentenced May 9.
Moore and Vallee shared custody of their 10-year-old son. At the time of the murder, their son was living with Moore temporarily. According to previous reporting from The News Tribune, Vallee borrowed her mother’s car that morning to drive to the apartment to pick up their son. According to charging documents, they were also supposed to discuss custody arrangements.
A few hours later, Moore showed up to Vallee’s mother’s home and left the boy and his belongings in the driveway. When Pierce County deputies got access to Moore’s unit from an apartment manager, they found a bullet on the living room floor and blood on the couch. Vallee was found wrapped in a blanket, reportedly wedged between the couch and a piece of furniture.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office later determined Vallee died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Vallee was a mother to four boys and one daughter, relatives previously told The News Tribune. She worked as a medical dispatcher at the University of Washington and enjoyed helping out on her family’s farm in Orting, as well as going to Seattle Kraken games with her loved ones.
Man pleads guilty in fatal shooting at Tacoma apartment
One of two men accused of murder in the fatal shooting of a 46-year-old man at a Tacoma apartment complex pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser offense.
Kenneth Wesley Lamar Jr., 30, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the Dec. 20, 2021 killing of Jason Arkell in the city’s South End.
His co-defendant, Keon Simms, has a trial date in the case for Wednesday, but court records appear to show that the trial will be continued to a later date.
Lamar is to be sentenced May 30. According to court records, prosecutors will recommend he be sentenced to time served and 18 months of community custody. He has been in custody since April 2022 when he was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on an unrelated warrant.
In a court filing explaining why prosecutors wanted to amend the defendant’s charges, deputy prosecuting attorney Scott Harlass said Lamar’s defense attorney, Emily Gause, had raised several substantive issues regarding Lamar.
“If litigated, there are concerns about their potential dispositive nature pre-trial,” Harlass wrote. “At trial, there are additional factual risks to our case as to Mr. Lamar specifically, and how those risks may impact the presentation of evidence in an effort to achieve convictions.”
Harlass added that given the nature of co-defendant cases, it was in the interest of justice to enter into a plea agreement with Lamar separate from Simms in an effort to focus the issues and secure a conviction short of trial.
Arkell was found dead shortly after midnight next to his Honda Accord, which was riddled with more than a dozen bullets in a parking lot. A witness who was interviewed by detectives at the time reportedly said they were at the apartment complex to gather tools to work on his vehicle, and the victim never left his car while the witness searched for tools.
The witness reported hearing what sounded like firecrackers and then seeing a vehicle speeding away toward Ash Street.
Further investigation led Tacoma Police Department detectives to believe Lamar and Simms killed Arkell in a case of mistaken identity, according to the probable cause document. The document explains the defendants may have targeted him because they believed he was responsible for shooting a member of a gang the defendants were said to be part of.
Simms was also charged with second-degree murder in a separate road-rage shooting that occurred a little more than a month after Arkell was killed. According to court filings, law enforcement confirmed that a bullet casing recovered from the scene of Arkell’s death was fired from the same gun used in the road rage shooting.
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 10:54 AM.
