YouTuber gets in gunbattle in Henderson home invasion, police say

A prominent YouTuber grabbed his 9 mm handgun out of the drawer of his nightstand and shot back at two home invaders who first shot him in a terrifying home invasion, according to an arrest report released Monday.

The report offered more details from the Jan. 12 ordeal in which Cordero James Brady, known on his social media channels as CJ So Cool, was shot several times in his Henderson home and was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Five people have been arrested in connection with the incident on Tranquil Peak Court. Raven Queen, 28, and Derrick Roberts, 25, were arrested last week, with Queen booked into custody on Tuesday and Roberts on Thursday. They each face charges of attempted murder, among other counts.

Three other people, all minors, also faced the same charges, according to Henderson police.

In a YouTube video posted on Jan. 27, Brady, who has 8.89 million YouTube subscribers, spoke of his reaction to being told by a detective that five people had been arrested.

“I’m very proud of the Henderson Police Department, I’m proud of the detectives, I’m proud of Las Vegas (Metropolitan Police Department) if they helped, I’m proud of everybody who teamed up to find the people that did this to me, right?” Brady said in the video. “Now if they didn’t shoot me it would still be as serious to me, but would the police have acted like this? I don’t know.”

“So I’m just grateful that everything happened the way it happened,” Brady continued. “I’m grateful that I’m alive, they missed all the major arteries, I didn’t need any surgery, I didn’t even need blood transfusions, and I didn’t need to move because guess what? I’m the one that ran them up out of here. So all these things happening in a bad situation, you gotta think about the good things and I just mentioned the good things.”

Awakened by intruders

According to the report, which redacts his full name, Brady went to sleep at about 10 p.m. on Jan. 11. A few hours later, just before 3 a.m., Brady was “awakened by two males yelling at him inside his bedroom,” the report said.

“Cordero stated that both males were armed with handguns and were yelling obscenities at Cordero,” the report said.

Brady stood next to his bed and both males began to shoot at him. Brady tried to fight them but of the attackers struck him in the head with a handgun and Brady was knocked down to the floor, the report said.

That’s when Brady pulled the 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun from his nightstand drawer and shot back at the two males who then ran out of Brady’s bedroom. Brady followed them out and stood at the top of the stairs shooting at the males.

Brady then called 911. He had been shot in his upper right and upper left legs, the report stated. His right femur, also known as the thigh bone, was broken because of the shot.

Evidence found

The search for evidence in the aftermath of the home invasion led to police finding a backpack on a dirt path. The backpack contained a cellphone and a .223-caliber firearm, police said.

The cellphone was searched. From there, police were able to piece together enough evidence and probable cause to arrest five people.

The details of how the investigation led to the arrests are outlined in the arrest report. The redacted portions contained in the document, however, make it difficult to accurately report that sequence of events and key details with certainty.

But at 4 p.m. on Jan. 11, hours before the home invasion, police said one of the minor suspects sent the following text to another one of the minor suspects:

“We hitting cj so cool house tn, be ready cuh, all black hit you in.”

Police said there is probable cause to charge all with attempted murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, battery with a deadly weapon, burglary while possessing a deadly weapon and home invasion.

Arraignments were set for Queen and Roberts at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Henderson Justice Court records.

Information for the three accused minors wasn’t publicly available.

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrettClarkson_ on Twitter.