On April 27, 2020, a call for help drew deputies to a home on McClanahan Road Southeast just off Highway 64, on the outskirts of Cleveland, Tennessee. There, they found Ramon Davila Tercero, 37, a Hispanic/Latino man, unresponsive with a gunshot wound. Paramedics tried to revive him, but the effort failed, and the afternoon hardened into a death investigation as the scene was secured and witnesses were sought.
At first, the account that reached authorities came from the homeowner himself. Investigators were told that David A. King of Cleveland had called to report that he had shot a man he believed was trying to break into his car. As detectives worked, they also learned there was history between the two men: Tercero had previously worked for King, and investigators reported claims that Tercero had stolen from him—an allegation that framed the encounter as something more than a random trespass.
But the story didn’t stay neatly contained. Witnesses described a different sequence of events—one that began earlier that day when Tercero arrived at King’s residence and spoke with two women later identified as a relative and a friend of King. They said Tercero got into a vehicle with the women to leave, and as the car was pulling away, King came out and ordered them to stop. Once King realized Tercero was the man in the vehicle, witnesses said he confronted him at gunpoint, insisting he wasn’t supposed to be back on the property. In the version shared publicly by investigators and local reporting, those moments turned tense and desperate: witnesses said Tercero pleaded with King, and then King shot him while he was still in the back seat area of the vehicle.
With those statements in hand, deputies consulted the District Attorney and moved the case from an on-scene shooting to a homicide charge. King was arrested and booked into the Bradley County Jail, and authorities announced he faced a first degree murder charge. By the next morning, he had appeared in court and was assigned a $100,000 bond, while the investigation’s competing narratives—self-reported suspicion of a break-in versus witness accounts of a confrontation and a shooting during departure—hung over the case like a final argument that could not bring the victim back.
