Late on May 13, 2020, 42-year-old Lynnette Lozano Toaetolu was fatally shot inside her motel room at the La Quinta Inn on Market Street in Reno, Nevada. She had been living there with her two young sons, ages five and seven; officers found her in the room after multiple gunshots were heard at about 10:30 PM. Investigators later determined that 23 shots had been fired inside the small room while she was reading a book.

The children were present during the shooting. The five-year-old later told detectives he pretended to be dead; the seven-year-old sustained a small burn to his back from an ejected shell casing. A neighbor from an adjacent room went to comfort the boys until police and paramedics arrived.

Authorities identified the primary suspect as Lynnette’s boyfriend, Lamar Andre Adams, who fled the scene, disposed of the AR-style pistol in Sacramento, then returned to the Reno area and was located by police. Adams confessed to shooting Toaetolu multiple times. In March 2022 Adams pleaded guilty to first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and child endangerment with a deadly weapon and was later sentenced to life with parole eligibility after nearly 33 years; he is serving that sentence in High Desert State Prison in Nevada.

Did anyone in the Reno area know Lynnette or her family and have information about her final days?