EL CAJON - A man accused of fatally shooting a Murrieta man and then a day later killing a convenience store clerk and wounding a customer in San Diego County admitted that he was the gunman in all three, his aunt testified Monday.

Samuel Thomas McCauley Jr. made the admissions when he arrived in his aunt's hometown of Cody, Wyo., less than a week after the death of 7-Eleven clerk Pedro Hernandez, said the defendant's aunt, Johanna Kinkade.

Kinkade's testimony came on the first day of a hearing for McCauley, 23, and 20-year-old Franko Bernal. After the hearing, a judge will determine if there is enough evidence for the two men to stand trial on murder, attempted murder, robbery and attempted robbery.

Hernandez, 54, was killed and another man was shot in the face around 2 a.m. Nov. 25 at a 7-Eleven in Lemon Grove.

Kinkade and Bernal are also accused in the death of 18-year-old Daunte Mercado-Bates, whose body was found in Murrieta a day earlier.

Mercado-Bates' body was found early the morning of Nov. 24 along a sidewalk east of Whitewood Road in Murrieta. Autopsy results showed that he had been shot twice in the upper chest.

Investigators said they were able to connect the crimes, even though they were in different counties, because tests indicated the bullets at each scene had been fired by the same gun.

During Monday's hearing, Kinkade testified that McCauley, whom she helped raise, called her and said he needed help with a drinking problem, so she arranged a bus ticket for him.

Only a couple of hours before he arrived in Wyoming, a San Diego County sheriff's detective called Kinkade and told her that McCauley was suspected in the killings, and that authorities knew he was on his way to see her.

McCauley "opened up to me" when she told him about the telephone call, the woman testified.

"He told me that he had shot somebody and killed him and two days later shot two more people and killed them," Kinkade testified.

McCauley told her "there was no reason" for the Murrieta shooting, she testified.

Her nephew said the plan was for Bernal to commit a robbery in Lemon Grove, but McCauley got tired of him driving back and forth and not going into the store, so he went in instead, Kinkade testified.

McCauley told her that "he walked in and shot somebody, then shot the clerk and took some money and got some beer," the aunt testified.

The defendants had been binge drinking for a week leading up to the shooting, Kinkade said.

McCauley "was upset" and "suicidal" as he related his version of events outside the bus station, Kinkade said. She persuaded him to turn himself in later that day.

Because there are special circumstances of murder during a robbery and murder during a burglary, the two could face the death penalty if convicted.

The San Diego County district attorney's office has not decided whether it will seek the death penalty.