Saunders
A man facing an attempted murder charge in Johnson County is now facing another attempted murder charge in Monroe County.
Nicholas Robert Saunders, 19, of Elizabethtown, was charged by the Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office on Oct. 4 with attempted murder, a Level 1 felony, aggravated battery, a Level 3 felony, and battery with a deadly weapon, a Level 5 felony.
Saunders, formerly of Morgantown, was previously charged in Johnson County with attempted murder, a Level 1 felony; aggravated battery, a Level 3 felony; and two counts of pointing a firearm at another, a Level 6 felony, for an incident that took place on Aug. 7. Saunders allegedly shot a man was shot multiple times at a home on the 6700 block of S. County Road 800 West in Morgantown.
Evidence Johnson County detectives obtained during the investigation led to them contacting Monroe County detectives with information about a July 11 shooting incident. Around 1:16 a.m. July 11, Bloomington Police were called to the 400 block of South Walnut Street on a report of shots fired. When they arrived, they found a man who had been shot lying on the side of the road, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Monroe Country Circuit Court 9.
The man told detectives he had been walking north on Walnut Street and had stopped at a stoplight when the occupants of a silver sedan called him a name. The man approached the vehicle and began speaking Spanish to them, asking how they were doing, according to the affidavit.
As the man walked up to the driver’s side window, the driver raised a silver handgun and fired, hitting him in the chest. The vehicle then drove northbound, fleeing the scene. Surveillance video later confirmed the vehicle description, the affidavit says.
He described the driver as a white male, and described the backseat passenger as a younger, possibly Hispanic male who had a black handgun, the affidavit says.
More than a month later, on Aug. 31, a detective with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office contacted Bloomington police, saying that they had identified Snapchat messages allegedly belonging to Saunders where he admitted to shooting someone in July.
In the messages that were sent on July 25, Saunders and an acquaintance appeared to have an argument over a woman. At one point during the conversation, the acquaintance tells Saunders that he’s “not hard” and wouldn’t make it in jail, according to the affidavit.
Saunders responds about four minutes later allegedly saying that people don’t know him in Bloomington. He then allegedly admitted to shooting someone in their chest in Bloomington earlier that month, telling the man that he can “see the report online,” according to the affidavit.
“I can swear up and down that was me,” Saunders then allegedly added.
Detectives later performed a search of vehicles belonging to Saunders, and a silver sedan was registered to him and a relative. They also discovered that Trafalgar police had run a license plate search on Saunders’ vehicle on July 6, about five days before the Bloomington shooting, according to the affidavit.
A Trafalgar officer told Bloomington detectives that he remembered performing a traffic stop on Saunders because he allegedly had a silver handgun sitting in his lap when the officer approached the vehicle. A Bloomington man was shot with a silver handgun by the driver of a silver sedan, the affidavit said.
Bloomington detectives spoke with Saunders at the Johnson County jail on the morning of Sept. 1, asking about the shooting and the silver sedan. Around 5:00 p.m. the same day, Saunders made a recorded video call from the Johnson County jail. He asked a relative to find his ammo box and to toss a “metal thing” out of it. The relative said they found the box, but only found paper, according to the affidavit.
The paper was a temporary license plate, which belonged to the silver sedan he owned. Johnson County detectives had previously searched Saunders’ Elizabethtown home and found a metal license plate on his nightstand, which was also registered to a silver sedan, according to the affidavit.
Detectives say that Saunders’ alleged actions show that he asked his family to dispose of physical evidence that linked him to the silver sedan used in the Bloomington shooting.
They later obtained Saunders’ cellphone and data records, which showed he was in Bloomington before the shooting and had left sometime after it occurred, the affidavit says.
A warrant was issued for his arrest on Oct. 4 in Monroe County. Saunders remains at the Johnson County jail on a $39,800 bond.
