OAKLAND, Calif. — Shane Killian’s neighbor heard loud bangs on the night of July 10, 2024, but assumed it was just someone lighting off the last of their fireworks from Independence Day.

Instead, the resident of Kitty Hawk Road in Alameda was hearing five family members being killed next door, gunned down one at a time, allegedly by Killian, according to court testimony. A few moments later, one of the victims, 70-year-old Michel Angel Carcamo Ramirez, showed up at the neighbor’s front door and began to frantically ring his bell, the neighbor testified at Killian’s preliminary hearing last month.

“My son-in-law Shane shot me and the whole family,” Carcamo Ramirez said, according to the neighbor’s testimony. “I’m dying.”

Carcamo Ramirez would indeed succumb to his gunshot wounds that night. Officers also found the bodies of Killian’s 6-year-old son, William Killian; his mother-in-law, Marta Elena Morales Diaz; his 1-year-old son, Wesley, who died days later; and his 36-year-old wife, Brenda Natali Morales, who was found with a gun in her non-dominant hand, according to police testimony.

Just minutes before the massacre, Morales made a call to her uncle, with plans to get away from Killian and visit family out of state. She said Killian was drunk, haranguing her with his paranoid jealousy and “would fight her a lot” when he was intoxicated, the uncle testified. A few moments later, Killian got on the phone.

“And what did he say?” an Alameda County prosecutor asked at the hearing.

“He was drunk, and he said that he distrusted Brenda a lot,” the uncle responded. “I told him that he was drunk, and that he could talk with me the following day when he was fine ... He said, ‘Yes, we’re going to talk, and everything will be fine.'”

But just a few minutes later, the shooting started, according to police.

Prosecutors allege that after shooting all five family members inside his home on the 400 block of Kitty Hawk Road, Killian called 911 and reported that Morales “shot all of us and shot my children,” before hanging up. He repeated the claim during a subsequent police interview, according to court records, adding that she became angry after she “overreacted” to Killian coming home from work and drinking a half-dozen beers.

At the court proceeding’s end, Killian’s lawyers argued prosecutors had failed to meet the low legal burden of a preliminary hearing, which requires them only to establish probable cause to keep the case going. Defense attorney Christina Moore painted Morales as the “emotional” one and Killian as the “voice of reason,” based on the uncle’s description of the call.

Morales, Moore said, expressed intent to take their children “out of state without any permission, without any conversation,” while Killian wanted to talk things out.

Judge Clifford Blakely, who found sufficient evidence to move the case to trial, said that Carcamo Ramirez’s “dying declaration” painted a different picture.

“He’s frantically ringing the Ring doorbell as he’s bleeding out, and actually showed the witness the holes in his body as he’s bleeding out, saying, ‘I’m dying, and Shane shot me and the whole family,'” Blakely said. “Minutes before the horrible tragedy, out of the blue, (Morales’ uncle) received a phone call from his niece Brenda, whom he says never calls him, who’s upset and tells him she wants to go to Arkansas and take the kids with her.”

Killian’s trial date has not yet been set. The 56-year-old remains jail without bail, facing five counts of murder.

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