New witness in Tyler McCain case alleges relationship with Nikki Cheng Saelee-McCain

Editor’s Note: This story includes graphic descriptions of domestic violence. Read with care. If you or someone you know needs help to stay safe you can find shelter at One Safe Place. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233.

Nikki Cheng Saelee-McCain was last heard from on May 18, 2024. 

Her husband, Tyler Scott McCain is being charged with her murder, along with a special allegation that she was killed to prevent her from testifying against him on felony domestic violence charges – those charges were dropped last July, after Saelee-McCain went missing. 

Three witnesses took to the stand yesterday, September 11, on the fourth day of a preliminary hearing to determine whether McCain will move forward to trial. They included a Redding man who said he was in a relationship with Saelee-McCain in the year before her disappearance. 

Luis Barajas recalled meeting Saelee-McCain at his workplace in 2023 before becoming friends. They eventually engaged in a sexual relationship, he said, while Saelee-McCain was still married, noting that he remained patient because he knows long-term relationships are hard to end. 

Barajas spoke in a quiet voice, describing his current home in Redding, as surrounded by roses with an oleander bush in front of the kitchen window. He lives there with his mother and two younger siblings, he said.

He told prosecutor Toby Powell that in 2023, Saelee-McCain would stay with him from time to time, usually for a few days, but once for a month before returning to the home she shared with her husband McCain. She told Barajas she was in the process of seeking a divorce, he said. 

He shared details of an incident in late 2023 when Saelee-McCain came to his home at night after allegedly being battered by her husband. He described her as arriving in a bathrobe with a “purple and swollen” face, abrasions on her back and “bruises everywhere.”

“She said Tyler had gone psych,” Barajas testified, “and flipped out on her and done horrible things to her.”

Saelee-McCain also told him, he said, that McCain had put a towel over her face and poured water over it – an experience that he said caused her to feel like she was suffocating. She said her husband had strangled her, Barajas testified, and held her captive for hours. 

Many details of the battering described in the testimony by Barajas match Saelee-McCain’s recorded report to police about an incident that allegedly occurred in December 2023 and led to the felony domestic violence charges her husband was facing at the time she disappeared. That recording was played in court earlier this week.

Two other witnesses also spoke on the stand yesterday, Justin Karren and Felicia Nelson, who lived together in a trailer on the McCain property on Olinda Road last year. 

Karren also testified the day before, and the court was shown a video of his statements to Sheriff’s deputies in March 2025. He says he was asked by McCain a few days after Saelee-McCain went missing to help “disappear” the couple’s newly purchased used Chevy Avalanche and whatever was inside it.

That Avalanche was found off Highway 36 about a week after Saelee-Mccain’s disappearance with a bloody sheet inside. Testing showed the blood to be Saelee-McCain’s, the Sheriff’s Office says.

Karren testified that he has lived on the Olinda property rent-free for about two years in exchange for helping McCain with things like cleaning the garage and taking trash to the dump. In the video of his interview with deputies in March 2025, Karren can be seen crying when pressed for information, telling law enforcement officers that his mother lives with him on the McCain property and has nowhere to go if something happens to him. 

Nelson, who was in a relationship with Karren at the time of the alleged victim’s disappearance, told the court about the sounds she heard the night Saelee-McCain went missing. She said she was in the trailer not far from the McCain’s home when she heard noises coming from the area where the Avalanche was parked, next to the McCain’s exterior bedroom door. 

This occurred, she said, sometime in the early morning hours of May 18, 2024, after Saelee-McCain was last seen by Karren inside the McCain home. Nelson had difficulty specifically describing the noises, but said they sounded like something being moved near the Avalanche.

McCain’s hearing will continue on Tuesday, September 16, at 9 am in Department 63. It’s expected to wrap up on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. 

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