Police: Threats preceded murder

Fight over woman had begun online, authorities allege

A dispute over a woman, fueled by threats posted on Facebook, may have set off an early-morning slaying Tuesday in Tempe that left one mandead and the other in jail.

Suspect Moises Alejandro Gutierrez, 22, admitted to police that he intentionally shot Zachary Rodriguez, 21 to death with a military grade automatic rifle, but also said he regretted the slaying, a court document says.

“The defendant’s current girlfriend is the ex-girlfriend of the victim and the mother of the victim’s child,’’ the document said. “The defendant and the victim had an ongoing dispute about the defendant’s relationship with the girlfriend.’’

Gutierrez and Rodriguez also were members of the same gang, although the shooting was the result of a personal dispute and is not considered gang-related, Tempe police say.

The “defendant reported that the victim had been making threatening statements on Facebook since the defendant started dating his girlfriend,’’ the report says.

Gutierrez was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, drive-by shooting and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Police said Gutierrez was sitting in the backseat of a Honda driven by his girlfriend when a Lincoln Navigator rearended his car shortly before 6 a.m. at Baseline Road and 48th Street in Tempe.

Gutierrez opened fire on Rodriguez, who was a passenger in the Navigator, fatally wounding him with shots to the head and torso, the court document says. He also fired at the woman who was driving, but she was not injured.

The document says that there had been mounting tensions between the two men. The night before the shooting, the mother of Gutierrez’s girlfriend spotted a suspicious car in the neighborhood and the girlfriend thought Rodriguez may have been driving.

The next morning, Gutierrez and his girlfriend drove to Rodriguez’s neighborhood in Phoenix, with Gutierrez bringing an automatic .223-caliber MP15 rifle and a semiautomatic handgun, the document says.

The stage for the shooting was set when Gutierrez and Rodriguez saw each other in a neighborhood. A juvenile female picked up Rodriguez to give him a ride and they followed Gutierrez and his girlfriend.

The document said that Rodriguez and the driver were unarmed. Neither female involved in the incident was identified in the document.

“The defendant said that he wanted to show his girlfriend that he was capable of defending her from the victim,’’ the document says.

Bond for Gutierrez was set at $1 million.