Teen says he killed his best friend by accident
An 18-year-old Cathedral City man told police he accidentally shot and killed his best friend as the two played around with a gun, then lied about it to avoid getting in trouble, according to testimony in court Thursday.
After a hearing, a judge ruled Alexis Yahir Duran, now 19, will stand trial on a murder charge in the death of 17-yearold Adam Pineda of Desert Hot Springs.
Just after 6:15 a.m. on Feb. 4, Riverside County sheriff's deputies got a report of a shooting in the 17000 block of Wide Canyon Road in Sky Valley. When they got there, deputies found evidence of a shooting and were told the victim had been dropped off at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs, a sheriff's spokesperson said at the time.
Pineda's girlfriend told sheriff's department homicide Investigator Daniel Cline she got a call from Duran saying Pineda had shot himself. She believed that because Pineda's brother had fatally shot himself and they had just attended a fundraiser for him, Cline testified Thursday.
Later, Duran told Cline he had been friends with Pineda since they were about 10 years old and considered him his best friend.
Duran said the two of them and Duran's younger brother left the fundraiser to go to a party in the Sky Valley area. At some point they got out of the Jeep Cherokee in an open part of the desert, fired a shot from Duran's gun, and returned to the car, according to Cline.
While there, the investigator said, Pineda got the firearm from Duran's lap and started waving it around before giving it back to Duran, who did the same.
Cline said Duran initially told him Pineda accidentally shot himself while he was playing with the gun, but eventually admitted it was he who pulled the trigger, not realizing that the gun had been loaded by Pineda.
After Pineda was shot, Duran and his brother immediately placed him in the passenger seat and drove him to the hospital, where they flagged down emergency staff and told them that he had shot himself, according to Cline. Then they parked the car in a nearby parking structure and went back to their house.
Pineda's girlfriend then called Duran and asked him to go back to the hospital to speak with the police about what happened, Cline said. When deputies found out Duran and his brother were with the victim at the time of the shooting, the two were detained and taken to the Palm Desert sheriff's station for questioning.
After admitting to shooting Pineda, Duran wrote an apology letter to the victim's mother, in which he apologized to her and wrote that he “didn't mean to and would never do that to (Pineda) on purpose,” Cline said.
Getting suspects to write such letters is a common police tactic aimed in part at deflecting any defense allegations that a confession was false or coerced. Defense attorneys have argued it's also an improper way of getting people who'd otherwise stay silent to confess by falsely implying things will go better for them if they apologize.
Nearing the end of Thursday's preliminary hearing, Duran's defense attorney, Jeffery Economides, asked the judge to consider reducing the charge from murder to involuntary manslaughter because there was no implied malice, a necessary element of a murder charge.
Deputy District Attorney Patrick Farrell objected, saying there was enough evidence for the murder charge because Duran had the gun for at least three weeks, had fired it before — including once shortly before the fatal shooting — and knew it was an operable firearm.
At the end of the hearing, Riverside County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold Duran to answer on the murder charge. A post-preliminary hearing arraignment was set for Dec. 19.
Duran remains held at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio on $1 million bail.
Desert Sun editor Eric Hartley contributed to this report.