In the still-dark hours of April 18, 2007, gunfire cracked through the parking lot of the Dominion House Apartments on Lindbar Drive in South Nashville. Inside a lower-level unit, Jose Miguel Juarez Avendano, a 24-year-old man, was startled awake by the commotion and moved toward his bedroom window to see what was happening outside. A single round cut through the glass, struck him in the neck, and left him mortally wounded before the night could turn into morning.
The violence, investigators later said, began with something small and reckless: a car break-in. Residents in the complex noticed two people breaking into a silver Honda Civic near one of the buildings and confronted them, and a brief scuffle followed. In the scramble, the would-be burglars fled, but not cleanly—clothing and a necklace were left behind in the lot, along with shell casings that hinted the danger hadn’t passed. Not long after, shots were fired again, and the bullet that found Avendano was believed to have come from that second burst of gunfire aimed toward the building.
The case did not move in a straight line to justice. Police gathered physical evidence, and an eyewitness later identified a suspect in a lineup, yet the prosecution faltered early: the case was dismissed in 2007 when witnesses failed to appear in court, and the killing slipped into the long, quiet backlog of cold files. Years later, the investigation was reopened after new information came in from a concerned citizen, and detectives revisited what had been collected and what had gone unsaid, rebuilding a path toward accountability that had once collapsed.
In 2018, cold case detectives filed a criminal homicide charge in Juvenile Court against Adam Saysongkham, who authorities said was already incarcerated on an unrelated aggravated robbery case. The story did not end there: in January 2022, prosecutors announced the cold case had been resolved when Adam Saysongkham and his brother, Ricky Saysongkham, agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and accept a six-year prison sentence. The case was handled by special prosecutors after it was disclosed that the person who brought forward key information had provided it to a Nashville assistant district attorney who could become a witness, and prosecutors said immunity agreements were used to secure crucial cooperation from eyewitnesses. Authorities also indicated that a third individual had been implicated during the renewed investigation, though the resolution centered on the two brothers’ pleas.
