Nashua Patch posted this file photo of Hollis resident Ren A. Rodgers, 23, who is charged with murder in connection with a Boston stabbing over the weekend.

BOSTON – The attorney for Ren A. Rodgers, the 23-year-old Hollis man accused of stabbing to death his brother-in-law in a Boston hotel room over the weekend, argued in court Tuesday that his client acted in self-defense.

“It got to the point … where there was no choice but to do something about it,” Attorney Joe Serpa said during Rodgers’s arraignment in Boston Municipal Court.

Everyone there, Serpa added, “was in an incredible amount of danger.”

Rodgers was ordered held without bail. His next court date isn’t yet known.

Rodgers is accused of stabbing Christopher Kellar, his brother-in-law, who was pronounced deceased a short time later at a Boston hospital.

Rodgers and Kellar, along with Laini Kellar, who is Rodgers’s wife and Christopher Kellar’s sister, and Christopher Kellar’s girlfriend had gone out to dinner in Boston’s North End Saturday night, according to police reports and the prosecutor, assistant district attorney Tara Burdman.

An argument broke out as the couples were headed back to the Hotel Indigo on Friend Street, just across Causeway Street from the TD Garden, according to the reports.

Things turned physical when the group arrived at the hotel, and at some point Christopher Keller was asked to leave. He did so, but returned to the room after realizing he’d left his cell phone charger behind.

Christopher Keller allegedly pushed his sister onto a bed several times, the reports state, and moments later Rodgers allegedly stabbed Keller once in the back with what the prosecutor described as a buck knife.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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