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RICHMOND — The trial began Wednesday for a former security guard charged with torching a homeless woman’s tent and shooting two men, one fatally, who came to help put out the fire.

Nebrith Rodriguez Rios, who often went by his middle name Anthony, is charged with murdering Francisco Carrillo and shooting a second man in the Oct. 27, 2018 incident. He is also charged with setting fire to a homeless woman’s tent, after apparently becoming enraged with a group of people who lived on the train tracks adjacent to a cannabis cultivation site at 1170 Hensley Street in Richmond, where Rodriguez Rios worked.

Rodriguez Rios’ attorney, deputy public defender Sarah Eisenhart, told jurors Wednesday that Rodriguez Rios lawfully shot both purported victims in self-defense and showed the jury pictures of a knife, a shovel, a large metal rod, and other weapons found at the shooting scene. She said Rodriguez Rios was surrounded after a group of people mistakenly blamed him for the tent fire.

“He was trapped, in this sort of gauntlet,” Eisenhart said, referring to an area of Richmond known as the Iron Triangle, where three railroads meet to form a triangular shape. “He had people coming up to him from both sides…with a fence to his back.”

Rodriguez Rios was hired as a security guard by his girlfriend, who worked at the cultivation warehouse, deputy district attorney Kabu Adodoadji told jurors. There was an ongoing issue at the site where homeless folks would cut holes through the fence that separated the train tracks from the warehouse property. Eisenhart said that Rodriguez Rios went to the train tracks that day after his backpack went missing, but that he wasn’t upset and simply wanted his property back.

The Hensley Street warehouse is the same area where, in August 2017, a group of four burglars broke in and began to steal cannabis plants and marijuana, according to Richmond police. But during the early morning burglary, they were thwarted by employees who opened fire on the burglars, who returned fire. One of the burglars was struck in the leg, and all four were later charged in federal court with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and other offenses. One of them was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison earlier this year.

In September 2018, the East Bay Express reported that the owners of the Hensley Street warehouse had hired an architectural firm owned by Tom Butt — co-managed by Butt’s son, Andrew Butt, a vice president — to draft plans to bring the site up to code and possibly expand it. Tom Butt responded in a written public statement that he “never worked on it, (has) never been to the site, never communicated with any City staff member about it and certainly never debated or voted on any matter affecting it.”

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When Carrillo and another man approached Rodriguez Rios, he said, “You wanna get shot in the head,” and then fired, Adodoadji told the jury during his opening statement. He said one of the shots struck Carrillo in the neck, killing him. Another shot blew Carrillo’s friend’s jaw in half, he said.

Eisenhart told jurors Rodriguez Rios “fired only the minimum shots to stop the threat” and chided authorities for failing to conduct an arson investigation on the tent fire. She said the arson charge was based on the assumption that Rodriguez Rios started the fire because he was seen in the area, but that fires were common in the encampment.

Rodriguez Rios is charged with murder, attempted murder, and arson, and faces life in prison if convicted. The trial is set to resume 10 a.m. Monday morning in Dept. 6 of the AF Bray Courthouse in Martinez, and is open to the public.

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