A man accused of fatally shooting two people on the Strip last summer wants a judge to set his bail at $100,000.
Authorities say Manuel Ruiz, 42, killed Rodney and Tanisha Finley over a social media feud. The livestreamed shooting occurred June 8 in front of the Fountains of Bellagio.
Prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty for him. Ruiz faces two counts of murder with use of a deadly weapon.
Chief Deputy Public Defender David Lopez-Negrete argued in the Monday bail motion that Ruiz acted in self-defense.
“Believing that Mr. Finley was going for a gun, Mr. Ruiz tried to stop him by drawing his own firearm (which he possessed lawfully as a concealed weapon permitholder) and opened fire; when it appeared that Mr. Finley was continuing to move, Mr. Ruiz’s CCW and self-defense training to eliminate the threat led him to aim higher,” the attorney argued in the filing. “In the next moment, Mr. Ruiz saw Mr. Finley holding a shiny black object, which he believed was a gun, so he shot her. Panicked, Mr. Ruiz fled, leaving behind his gun as well as some of his clothing across the street.”
Prosecutors have previously dismissed Ruiz’s self-defense theory.
“I think it’s probably garbage,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said last year. “There’s no indication from any of the evidence at all that self-defense would be a viable defense. No weapons were found near the victims, on the victims. Nobody at all, in all of the many interviews done on this case (with) eyewitnesses talked about either of these folks having weapons or even appearing to reach for a weapon.”
Lopez-Negrete seemed to acknowledge in the filing that Ruiz killed the Finleys. But he said that the shooting was not “first-degree, cold-blooded murder” because of the circumstances and Ruiz’s mental state.
In a previous incident, Tanisha Finley had struck Ruiz with a selfie stick and Rodney Finley had pushed him, Lopez-Negrete said. Ruiz also has a “history with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” according to the filing, after he was stabbed in a “random, brutal attack” by gang members as a 23-year-old in California.
Rodney Finley, also a YouTuber, has accused Ruiz of pushing him, too.
Archie Coronado, identified by police as a witness who had been watching Finley’s livestream, previously said the feud started with an altercation between the Finleys and Ruiz on Halloween in 2023. Finley’s wife apologized to Ruiz, but the Finleys wanted an apology, too, and Ruiz didn’t say he was sorry, according to Coronado.
Finley decided to start his own YouTube channel and used it to criticize Ruiz and Ruiz’s wife, Coronado said. Ruiz, he said, did not react well.
“He just couldn’t take the negativity, and I guess he was just getting angrier and angrier,” Coronado said.
Lopez-Negrete, the public defender, stressed Ruiz’s community ties. He has three children and served as his family’s breadwinner, the attorney said, working full-time as a YouTuber since 2021 and previously holding jobs at a helicopter tour company, nutrition shop and call center.
A bail hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.
