Police Report Details Planning and Motivations of Venture-N Shooter

It was Friday, Aug. 28, just before 5 p.m., when Ousman Ceesay paid $249.99 to a clerk at Bass Pro Shops on the southside of Tucson for a Taurus GX2 semi-automatic pistol. The gun is described on the retailer’s website as having “enhanced capacity” and as “redefining what an entry-level handgun can be.” 

Days later, Ceesay used that same gun to shoot and kill two men, Cameron Capara and Vincent Siqueiros, outside Tucson’s Venture-N gay bar before shooting himself in the head.

It’s been three weeks since the hate-motivated killing on Aug. 31, which left Tucson’s LGBTQ+ community — and the city as a whole — grieving and struggling to make sense of such a hateful and violent act.

Through a records request, LOOKOUT obtained the initial police report and 911 audio from the night of the murders, and is now making key information about the murders available to the public. 

The report includes the names of other bars Ceesay was planning to target, as well as details of a note left in his apartment showing the murders were motivated by hate specifically against the gay community. In the note, he wrote: “I will go after and kill as much as gay people as I can.”

And though the report primarily focuses on the events leading up to and including the shooting, it also provides some insight into how Siqueiros and Capara spent that night, before and even after the shooting. 

Siqueiros had been at the bar for hours. He ordered pizza and had been buying people drinks. When he went outside he left his pink purse on the bar top, a sign he was likely just briefly stepping outside.

Capara had only been at the bar for a short while before the shooting. 

As he stumbled back inside, bleeding heavily from his abdomen, one witness described his actions as if he were “trying to hide.”

A planned attack

After executing a search warrant on Ceesay’s apartment, Tucson Police Department detectives found receipts and notes that explained his movements and preparation in the days leading up to the attack. Earlier in the day, they found a receipt in the center console of Ceesay’s truck showing he bought Remington UMC 9mm ammunition at Sportsman’s Warehouse on Calle Santa Cruz on Aug. 29, the day after buying the gun. 

The same day he purchased the ammunition, he went to 520 Tactical, a shooting range in the city, where he spent $81.70 on target practice.

The owner of 520 Tactical told police it was Ceesay’s first time shooting at the range — he had to fill out a first-timer’s waiver. While the range’s transaction records don’t itemize purchases, the amount was consistent with two boxes of 9mm ammunition and a paper target.

The owner said he’d spoken with Ceesay directly and “did not notice anything off,” but recalled Ceesay mentioning he’d recently bought a gun.

Ceesay also spent time casing the bar and planning out his moves, down to the minute.

While cataloging evidence from Ceesay’s clothing, officers found a folded sheet of paper in his pants pocket. On one side were addresses for three other LGBTQ+-friendly bars in Tucson, along with walking times between them, including a note that Venture-N was a one-minute walk from an address on North 6th Avenue. On the other was a list of Environmental Protection Agency regional offices, with the words “uber pickup” written above a separate Tucson address.

LOOKOUT is withholding the names of the other businesses targeted out of public safety concerns. One of the business owners on the list told LOOKOUT they didn’t want to be on “a public list of wonderful places a terrible person would want to shoot up.” They added, “We will continue doing what we do, speaking up for the LGBTQIA+ community who means so much to us, and welcoming them into our space with open arms.”

Surveillance footage reviewed by detectives showed a man, wearing the same clothing Ceesay was later found in, pacing around a parking lot near the bar around 9 p.m. Aug. 30.

According to the report, witnesses “described how they were holding up victim’s head, consoling him it was going to be okay.”

A Ring doorbell camera belonging to a nearby resident captured someone walking south toward the bar at 11:02 p.m. Police said the footage closely matches Ceesay’s driver’s license photo.

Additional footage showed a man on the night of the shooting circling the property along the alleys on its east and west sides before he was picked up on the northwest corner by a silver, compact four-door sedan that drove eastbound on Fairmount Avenue.

Detectives visited the other businesses named on the note found in Ceesay’s pocket. Employees at each said they didn’t recognize Ceesay from a photo, according to the police report.

“We just need someone here fast”

At approximately 12:27 a.m. on Aug. 31, a 911 call went out for shots fired at the Venture-N. A second caller a block away reported hearing roughly eight gunshots from an alley to the north.

A witness who was in the parking lot waiting for a rideshare told police he and Siqueiros were about to leave when a man he described as looking homeless approached and asked, “What are y’all doing?” Siqueiros answered, and gunshots followed within moments. The Lyft driver took off without the witness, who then ran to a nearby Filiberto’s and called a friend for a ride home.

An Uber driver waiting in the lot told police a Black man about six yards away began shooting toward people near his car, prompting his passenger to run. The driver then left.

Siqueiros suffered gunshot wounds to his left armpit and what appeared to be exit wounds on his upper back. He was found roughly 15 feet from the shooter’s body, with spent casings and an empty magazine nearby. He was declared dead at the scene at 12:39 a.m.

Capara was shot in the abdomen. Witnesses said he stumbled inside saying, “I’ve been shot,” made it toward the pool table in the back and was held by several patrons who tried to stop the bleeding until emergency crews arrived. According to the report, witnesses “described how they were holding up victim’s head, consoling him it was going to be okay.”

After Capara entered the bar, the Venture-N bartender called 911 to report the shooting.

“He’s bleeding quite a bit,” the bartender said, according to the 911 audio recording. “My customers are saying he’s probably dying.”

The 911 operator asked how old Capara was. The bartender called out to Capara, but then corrected himself, asking the people trying to save his life how old he was.

“We just need someone here fast,” the bartender, breathing heavily, said. A few moments later, two minutes and 23 seconds into the call, the bartender said, “I hear the sirens now.”

The operator asked how Capara was doing: “If he’s not breathing we need to start CPR,” she said.

Capara was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. He died next to the pool table inside the bar. Siqueiros was pronounced dead near a light pole outside. Officers draped a yellow emergency blanket over his body. Later in the night, as it began to rain, they erected a tent over him to preserve evidence as detectives continued to work.

Officers found Ceesay with a gunshot wound to the head and began chest compressions until fire crews took over. He was transported to Banner University Medical Center, where he died at 1:07 a.m.

“I will die being a straight man.”

In a safe inside Ceesay’s apartment, alongside empty pistol and magazine holsters, a tape recorder and “a duty belt similar to those used by police officers,” detectives found papers that had been torn to shreds.

According to the report, “Most of the pages have the heading ‘To whom it may concern’ and the date ‘8/29/2026’” — two days before the shooting.

Detectives were able to reconstruct, “like a puzzle,” some of the torn pages to read what may be an explanation for the killings.

In one passage, he wrote, “My target and kill list, is to kill all the gay/homosexual or what what ever nasty name they call themselfs.”

“I am a straight/heterosexual man my whole life and I will die being a straight man,” Ceesay wrote. “I never judge anyone as long as you don’t bring your nasty gay life to me or try to."

As a motive, Ceesay wrote that he had been driving for Uber when a female passenger and a “gay male rider” got in his car, and that while the woman distracted him, the male rider “injected him with a nasty blood needle.” He wrote that he filed a police report about the incident.

“Because of this nasty trick played on me, I will go after and kill as much as gay people as I can,” he wrote, according to the report.

LOOKOUT requested information about any reports filed by Ceesay with the Tucson Police Department. A police spokesperson said the incident likely occurred in Oklahoma.