36-year-old Brenda Natali Morales made a phone call to an uncle just minutes before her husband, Shane Killian, fatally shot her, their two sons, and Morales's parents in a drunken rage on July 10, 2024, prosecutors say.

In the nearly two years since five family members were brutally killed inside a home on Kitty Hawk Road in Alameda, we've heard very little about the case against 56-year-old Shane Killian. Killian was arrested and charged with the crime, in which his younger immigrant wife, his in-laws, and his two small boys were all fatally shot, but little else about the case has been made public.

That changed with a preliminary hearing this week, in which an Alameda County judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence to take Killian to trial. As Bay Area News Group reports, Killian's defense attorney presented evidence that Morales was enraged the night of the crime, and that she was the one who pulled the trigger, killing her children and parents.

Killian's attorney, Christina Moore, reportedly pointed to a phone call that Morales made just minutes before the shooting occurred. In the call, Moore argued, Killian acted as a "voice of reason" and Morales appeared to be the "emotional" one, according to a description from her uncle. Morales reportedly told her uncle in Arkansas that she wanted to take her kids and come stay with him, after Killian had reportedly come home and gotten belligerantly drunk.

Killian reportedly told the uncle that he did not trust Morales, but the uncle told him he would talk to him when he was sober, and Killian reportedly said, "Yes, we’re going to talk, and everything will be fine."

Judge Clifford Blakely was unconvinced by the defense's evidence, and pointed to the tesimony of a neighbor who answered his door to find Morales's father, 70-year-old Michel Angel Carcamo Ramirez, riddled with bullet wounds, saying "I'm dying," and "My son-in-law Shane shot me and the whole family."

Ramirez collapsed on the lawn and would later die from his wounds. Also dead were Morales, her mother Marta Elena Morales Diaz, and her 6-year-old son William Killian. The couple's one-year-old son, Wesley Killian, was initially found alive but died days later from his wounds.

Morales was found, according to police, with a gun in her non-dominant hand.

Blakely ruled that there was sufficient evidence to go to trial, and no trial date has been set.

Previously: Alameda Quintuple Murder Suspect Faces Victims' Family In Court