A 30-year-old Denver man was charged with first-degree murder after allegedly shooting and killing his wife while his son was asleep in the next room, according to an arrest affidavit.
Around 1 a.m. on Sept. 24, Tyler Nelson called 911 to report an accidental shooting during a drunk argument about gun safety, his arrest affidavit stated. During interviews with the 30-year-old man, however, investigators began to notice inconsistencies in his story.
The shooting happened in the 600 block of South Dayton Street, in Denver’s Windsor neighborhood.
Nelson told dispatchers that his finger slipped during the argument, catching the trigger of the Remington 870 shotgun allegedly still in its carrying case and shooting his wife — 30-year-old Breanna Canter — in the jaw, according to the affidavit.
When investigators examined Canter’s body, there were multiple wounds to her upper right chest and chin area that “did not appear to match up with how Nelson explained the gunshot,” police wrote in the affidavit.
The preliminary examination of the scene also didn’t match Nelson’s explanation of events, police said.
Canter was declared dead on-scene at the apartment around 1:20 a.m. and Nelson was taken into custody, Denver police said.
“Throughout the entire time Nelson was at police headquarters, he never once asked how his wife was doing,” police wrote in the affidavit. “He also never asked anyone how his son was doing. … He really didn’t show any emotion about what had occurred.”
Nelson told police that he and Canter were arguing about him “playing games on his cell phone and not paying attention to her,” the affidavit stated. He said he went to the bathroom and, when he came back, she grabbed the gun from the closet and started asking him about the safety.
When Nelson saw Canter remove the shotgun from the closet, he said he got up and grappled for the gun with her, claiming that she tried to “swat” him away at one point, police said in the affidavit.
He told her to drop the gun and said it wasn’t safe to handle since the two had both been drinking, according to the affidavit.
Nelson said he was facing Breanna and the gun was pointed upwards toward her head when he tried to move the gun away, police said. That’s when his knuckle allegedly caught on the trigger through the soft case and the gun “went off.”
Nelson told investigators that the gun was never removed from the case and that he didn’t know it was loaded, police said in the affidavit. However, when detectives arrived at the apartment, the shotgun was out of the case, leaning against an open closet with the muzzle pointed upward and none of the police officers had touched the gun, the affidavit said.
When detectives confronted Nelson about the gun being out of the case, his story started to change, according to the affidavit. He told police he was no longer sure if the gun was in a case but he wasn’t sure when or how it was removed.
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The man told police that he and Canter had been arguing more lately and that his marriage and job hadn’t been going well, but he still denied shooting her intentionally, police said.
He told detectives “that everything he touches seems to go bad,” according to the affidavit.
Nelson’s son was taken to Denver Human Services for placement, police said.
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