Charges: Man shot in NSP appeared to be making ghost

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.

Murder charges were filed Thursday.

At the murder scene, two gun safes were open and empty. Police soon found bags with 15 handguns discarded 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 sent to the 2100 block of North McKnight Road at 6:13 p.m. Monday on a report of a male with a handgun near an apartment. A woman banged on an apartment door and yelled, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” the criminal complaints said.

Police went into the apartment and found a shotgun and bulletproof vest in the hallway leading to bedrooms. Down the hallway, Rojas was on the floor with a gunshot wound to the side of his head. He was pronounced dead.

In addition to the empty gun safes and 3D printer, officers saw a money counter, boxes of ammunition and rifle magazines in the apartment. It appeared Rojas was using the printer to create lower receivers for handguns, the complaints said.

Investigators also discovered Rojas posted a photo to social media 12 hours earlier that showed thousands of dollars in cash on his bed at his apartment. Law enforcement didn’t find the money.

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.

Officers found the bags with 9-mm handguns inside. One had what appeared to be blood on its grip. A pistol and two large-capacity magazines were also in one of the bags.

Shortly before Rojas was killed, a woman and a male were seen arguing north of the residence. Two other males walked up to the apartment and Rojas yelled down to them, asking what they were doing. The woman appeared to wait outside the door. A shot was heard.

Multiple people were seen running from the apartment. Of the two males who had walked up to the apartment, one had a gun tucked in his waistband and fled with a large bag. The other tried to shove a gun in his sweatshirt as he ran while carrying a heavy-looking bag. The woman ran away with them.

Another male holding a gun was seeing running to a vehicle and leaving in the opposite direction. And another male, who had a cast on his arm and was seen with Rojas at the apartment shortly before the homicide, was spotted at a gas station next to the apartment building and asked people to use their phones to get an Uber.

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. The relative said Rojas was worried for his safety because someone shot at his car a few days earlier.

Officers conducted surveillance at an address in the 700 block of Bedford Street in St. Paul that was associated with 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.

Police pulled over the vehicle that the man was riding in, and identified the people inside as 19-year-old Steven Lawrence Terry and his 36-year-old mother. Officers found a handgun without a serial number in a bag between the two of them. It matched the ghost guns abandoned near the murder scene, the complaints said.

Officers arrested the mother and son. The woman told police she found the gun on her porch, and grabbed it because she thought her husband was setting 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.

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 law enforcement showed her a photo of one of them, she said he and another male were in the room with the safes when she left to look for Terry. She said she was outside when she heard a gunshot, and one of the males 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 said she went to check on Rojas, shook him and realized he had a gunshot wound. 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 said she happened to run in the same direction as one of the males.

“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 are charged with aiding and abetting murder. Terry is also charged with possession of a gun not identified by a serial number, as is his mother. 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.

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