CatCity Man Pleads 'Not Guilty' In Best Friend's Fatal Shooting

CATHEDRAL CITY, CA — A 19-year-old man suspected of fatally shooting his best friend in Sky Valley earlier this year re-entered a not guilty plea Tuesday to murder.

Alexis Yahir Duran of Cathedral City also denied a sentence-enhancing allegation of discharging a firearm causing great bodily injury, according to court records.

The charges stem from a shooting in the 17000 block of Wide Canyon Road in Sky Valley on Feb. 4, which resulted in the death of Desert Hot Springs resident Adam Pineda, 17. Deputies from the Palm Desert sheriff's station responded at 6:18 that morning to a call of gunshots, according to Sgt. Ed Baeza of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

"When deputies arrived, they located evidence consistent with a shooting scene," Baeza said. "Deputies were advised a male victim had been dropped off at Desert Regional Medical Center suffering from gunshot wounds who succumbed to his injuries despite medical care."

During a preliminary hearing at the Larson Justice Center in Indio, Investigator Daniel Cline of the sheriff's Central Homicide Unit testified that he spoke to Pineda's girlfriend, who told him that Duran called her and told her that Pineda had shot himself.

The victim's girlfriend believed it could be true because Pineda's brother had fatally shot himself and they had just attended a fundraiser for him, Cline said. During an interview with Duran, the defendant said he had been friends with Pineda since they were about 10 years old and that he considered the victim his best friend.

The defendant said they had left the fundraiser to go to a party in the Sky Valley area, Cline said. They left in a Jeep Cherokee, driven by Pineda with Duran in the front passenger seat and the defendant's younger brother in the back seat.

At some point they went to an empty area in the desert, fired a shot from Duran's gun, and returned to the car, according to Cline. While there, the victim allegedly got the firearm from Duran's lap and started waving it around before giving it back to Duran, who did the same.

Initially, Duran said during an interview that the victim accidentally shot himself while he was playing with the gun, but eventually said he pulled the trigger, not realizing that the gun had been loaded by Pineda, Cline said.

After the victim 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 subsequently called Duran and asked him to return to the hospital to speak with the police about what happened, Cline said. When deputies found out they with the victim at the time of the shooting, Duran and his brother were detained and taken to the Palm Desert sheriff's station for questioning, where Duran spoke with Cline.

After Duran allegedly admitted to shooting Pineda, he wrote a letter to the victim's mother, in which he apologized and wrote that he "didn't mean to and would never do that to (Pineda) on purpose," Cline said.

Near the end of the preliminary hearing, Duran's defense attorney Jeffery Economides asked the judge to consider charging his client with involuntary manslaughter instead of murder because there was no implied malice in the case to prove the murder charge, he said.

Deputy District Attorney Patrick Farrell said there was enough evidence for the murder charge because the defendant had the gun for at least three weeks, had discharged the firearm before, including once shortly before the fatal shooting, and knew it was an operable firearm.

At the end of the preliminary hearing, Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Ryan ruled that, based on what happened that day, there was sufficient evidence to hold Duran to answer on the murder charge.

Duran remains held at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio on $1 million bail.