Man fatally shot in North St. Paul seemed to be making ‘ghost gun’ parts
When North St. Paul police found a 24-year-old man fatally shot in an apartment this week, they discovered a 3D printer and it appeared he’d been making parts for “ghost guns” — firearms that are privately made and untraceable because they don’t have serial numbers.
The charges of murder were filed on Thursday.
At the scene of the crime, two gunsafes were opened and empty. Police found 15 handguns and bags of ammunition in the area.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged a man and woman, both 19, on Thursday with aiding and abetting murder in the death of Anthony R. Rojas.
Officers were dispatched to the 2100 Block of North McKnight Road, Monday at 6:13pm on a report that a male was carrying a handgun in a nearby apartment. A woman banged on an apartment door and yelled, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” the criminal complaints said.
The police entered the apartment, and discovered a bulletproof vest and a shotgun in the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Rojas, who was lying on the ground with a gunshot injury to his side of the head in the hallway below, was found by the police. He was declared dead.
Officers also found a money counter in the apartment, along with empty gun safes, a 3D printer and boxes of ammunition. They also saw rifle magazines and boxes of ammunition. The complaints stated that it appeared Rojas used the printer to make lower receivers for handguns.
Investigators discovered that Rojas had posted on social media a picture 12 hours before showing thousands of dollars in cash lying on his bed. Law enforcement didn’t find the money.
Find bags of guns
Someone called 911 at 6:21 p.m. Monday, less than 10 minutes after officers were sent to the apartment, and reported a juvenile male with a gun in his pocket dropped two bags of handguns in the 2100 block of Burke Avenue — less than half a mile from the apartment where Rojas was killed.
The bags contained 9-mm pistols. One handgun had what appeared blood on the grip. In one bag, there was also a pistol with two large-capacity magazines.
Just before Rojas died, a man and woman were seen fighting north of Rojas’ residence. Rojas asked them to stop and yelled to the men who were walking up to his apartment. The woman appeared to be waiting outside the door. A gunshot was heard.
Several people ran from the apartment. Two males had entered the apartment. One had a pistol tucked into his waistband. The other fled with a heavy bag. The other man tried to shove the gun in his sweatshirt, while running and carrying a bag that looked heavy. The woman ran off with them.
Another man with a firearm was seen running in the opposite directions to a car and boarding it. Another male with a cast, who was seen in the apartment just before the murder, asked for people to call Uber at the gas station near the apartment.
A relative of Rojas identified the woman seen by the apartment as Rojas’ new girlfriend, 19-year-old La Vida Rose Martinez, also known as Lavida, according to a court document. The relative believed one of the males with a gun was Martinez’s ex-boyfriend. Rojas’ relative claimed that he was concerned for Rojas’ safety after someone had shot at his vehicle a few weeks earlier.
Both mother and son arrested
Officers conducted surveillance in St. Paul’s 700 block of Bedford Street. The address was connected to Martinez. They saw a man leave with a cast on his arm, and he matched the description of the man with the cast who had been seen by Rojas’ apartment.
The police pulled over the car that the man was in and identified those inside as Steven Lawrence Terry, 19, and his mother, 36. In a bag that was between them, officers found a handgun with no serial number. The complaints stated that it matched ghost guns left near the crime scene.
The mother and son were both arrested. The mother told officers that she grabbed the gun from her porch because she believed her husband had set her up.
Terry said Martinez had picked him up, they went shopping at a mall in Edina and then to Rojas’ apartment. He said Martinez had a handgun “and wore a stylish bulletproof vest when they went” to the apartment, according to the complaints.
He said he didn’t know the two armed males who had been seen in the area, but didn’t like how they were looking at him and he walked to a nearby gas station to get an Uber; he also said he didn’t know about the shooting.
A woman says she was outside and heard a gunshot
Law enforcement executed a search warrant at Martinez’s residence and spoke to her relatives, and she turned herself into law enforcement on Tuesday.
She said the two men seen in the area were Terry’s friends and she only brought them to the apartment. When she was shown a picture of one, she claimed that he and a second male were in the bedroom with the safes at the time when she went looking for Terry. She told police that she was outside at the time of hearing a gunshot and one male ran past her.
When law enforcement asked Martinez if she saw anything in the suspect’s hands, she said hadn’t noticed anything because she was suffering from PTSD. She said she hadn’t met with the males right before the shooting.
Martinez says she went to Rojas and shook him, discovering he had been shot. She wasn’t sure if he shot himself or if he’d been killed, and she screamed about him being dead and ran out of the apartment. She claimed that she ran in the same direction of one of the men.
“Martinez thought that carrying a bag of guns must have been heavy, so that is why the guy dropped them,” the complaints said of what she told law enforcement. “Martinez stated that she thought they used her to get to (Rojas).”
A confidential informant told police that a different person with the nickname “23” and another person were “just supposed to rob the guy of the ghost guns, but 23 shot him instead,” the complaints said.
Martinez and Terry face charges of aiding and abet murder. Terry and his mother are both charged with the possession of a weapon without a serial code. Court files didn’t list attorneys for any of them.
The county attorney’s office says the case is still under investigation with respect to other people being charged.