Anthony Giunta got a little scraped up earlier this week while being picked up by a pair of Phoenix bail bondsmen for skipping bail, and he urged that his friends and family who were watching the incident shoot the bail bondsmen.
Police say 23-year-old Nicholas Malicki obliged, and murdered the men.
The bondsmen, David Brickert, 37, and Wesley Kampen, 39, of Sanctuary Bail Bonds, went to pick up Giunta from an apartment in the area of 17th Avenue and Peoria.
Giunta resisted the arrest and "sustained visible injuries to his face," according to court documents obtained by New Times.
Giunta's family and friends started to surround the bail bondsmen, who were escorting Giunta away in handcuffs, and they were "vocally upset" about Giunta getting a little roughed up.
"Anthony yelled to the crowd to shoot them!" a probable-cause statement says.
Sure enough, police say, one of the people in the crowd pulled out a handgun, and shot the bail bondsmen from behind at close range.
Giunta was arrested a few hours later with the handcuffs dangling from one of his wrists and "minimized his involvement" when talking to the cops, according to court documents.
On Wednesday, though, Giunta decided he'd talk and identified Malicki as the shooter. Several witnesses also saw a photograph of Malicki, and police say each one identified Malicki as the shooter.
Police heard that Malicki also was trying to scrape together some money from people to help him skip town. They also heard he was staying at a house off of 27th Avenue, between Bell and Union Hills.
Police conducting surveillance on the house saw him leave the house with several others, and after pulling over the car, they found Malicki in the backseat with more than $500 in cash.
Malicki claimed he was there when Giunta got roughed up but claimed that he just rode away from the area on his bicycle and never even heard the shooting.
He says he's being "framed by all the witnesses" and that it's "another Nick" that the cops should be looking for.
The cops didn't buy it, and Malicki was booked on two first-degree murder charges, as well as another felony charge for having a gun as a convicted felon. He has two prior drug convictions.
Malicki's bond was set at $750,000, although if we had to guess, any bail-bond agency is going to be a little apprehensive about making that happen.
