A Utah man charged in the shooting deaths of an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy and another man pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday to murder and other charges.
Defense attorney Michael L. Becker entered the dual pleas on behalf of Rhett McKenzie Nelson, 36, of St. George, Utah, just over a month after the defendant was found to be mentally competent to stand trial.
Criminal proceedings had been suspended in May 2021 after a doubt was declared about Nelson’s competency, with him subsequently being deemed to be incompetent to stand trial.
Nelson was charged in June 2019 with two counts of murder for the shootings of off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Gilbert Solano in Alhambra and Dmitry Alekseyevich Koltsov in downtown Los Angeles hours apart on June 10, 2019.
Nelson — whose family in Utah reported him missing in May 2019 and noted that he had a history of opiate abuse — allegedly shot Solano twice in the head at a Jack in the Box restaurant at 2531 W. Valley Blvd. The 50-year-old deputy died two days later at County-USC Medical Center.
Nelson allegedly shot Koltsov, 31, hours earlier in the 1900 block of East Seventh Place, between Santa Fe Avenue and Alameda Street, in downtown Los Angeles. Koltsov was among a group of skateboarders whom Nelson allegedly fired on from a moving vehicle.
Nelson is also charged with one count of attempted murder, along with two robberies in Long Beach hours after Solano’s shooting.
The defendant was arrested in Long Beach the following day.
He is charged separately in San Diego County with five other robbery counts stemming from an alleged crime spree in the San Diego area between June 7, 2019, and June 9, 2019.
Nelson is due back in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Sept. 29.