FACES OF HOMICIDE
Nearly 200 people were killed in county in 2019
Jacob Pacheco’s body was left next to a dumpster.
The 19-year-old was dumped face down on the ground. He had one bullet in his back and another to the back of the head.
It was nearly noon on April 11 when someone spotted his body sprawled in the dirt near Seventh Avenue and Siesta Way in Phoenix.
He was long dead when police arrived. No one knew who dumped him there or why he was killed.
Eight months later, police have yet to make any arrests in the case.
“Some nights, I just lay awake and wonder what happened,” Jacob’s sister, Lanette Pacheco, said. “What could he had done that someone wanted to take his life and just leave him there?”
Pacheco was one of nearly 200 people killed in Maricopa County in 2019.
The final numbers for the year won’t be publicly reported by the Maricopa County medical exam
iner until mid-January.
Initial figures compiled and analyzed by The Arizona Republic indicate there may be fewer homicides in Maricopa County this year compared with last. There were 181 murders during the first 10 months of 2019, compared with 221 during the same time period in 2018.
What stood out this year is that nearly a quarter of all of the murders across the metro area have gone unsolved. This is the first year The Republic has tracked police clearance rates.
2019: A decline in homicides
This is the second year in a row Maricopa County saw a drop in the number of murders.
Most of the major Maricopa County cities followed the trend.
Tempe, Chandler and Glendale saw a spike when comparing the first 10 months of 2019 to the same 10 months of 2018. However, in cities with homicides in the single-digits, a small change can appear to be a significant and often shocking jump.
❚ Phoenix: 103 in 2019, 116 in 2018.
❚ Glendale: 15 in 2019, 9 in 2018.
❚ Tempe: 9 in 2019, 3 in 2018.
❚ Mesa: 8 in 2019, 26 in 2018.
❚ Chandler: 6 in 2019, 5 in 2018.
❚ Scottsdale: 3 in 2019, 11 in 2018.
❚ Gilbert: 1 in 2019, 2 in 2018. Some shifting is to be expected from year to year, according to Jesenia Pizarro-Terrill, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
“Generally, what we see with homicides is fluctuations,” Pizarro-Terrill said. “It’s very natural to increase and then decrease.”
The medical examiner determines which deaths in Maricopa County are labeled as homicides. Homicide numbers provided by the medical examiner can differ from those used by police.
Law enforcement, unlike medical examiners, usually don’t count killings that are determined to be lawful, such as a police shooting or a shooting in selfdefense.
The manner of deaths in 2019 included stabbing, strangling, suffocation and car crashes.
But the majority of the victims were shot to death. The medical examiner cited gunshot wounds as the primary cause of death in nearly 80% of all deaths during the 10-month period. This was down from 84% during the same time period in 2018 and up from 77% in 2017.
A law enforcement officer shot and killed at least 17 of the 2019 Maricopa County victims — approximately 9% — in 2019. Overall, law enforcement shootings so far are down in 2019, when compared with record-high numbers in 2018.
Stabbings accounted for 12% and blunt force trauma for 5% of all deaths in 2019. The Medical Examiner’s Office also reported one strangulation and one suffocation. Car crashes were cited as the cause of two deaths.
‘Lost in the sand’
Lanette Pacheco has heard countless stories of what supposedly happened to her brother.
She has a hard time imagining it, though. She can’t picture the smiling boy she knew being abandoned near a dumpster like trash. She won’t let herself.
As the oldest of seven, she was like a mother to Jacob and her other siblings growing up in south Phoenix. Jacob was the second youngest child and, with seven years between them, Lanette vividly remembers changing his diaper for the first time and watching him go off to kindergarten.
They tried to stay in touch when he entered the foster care system.
When he died, she hadn’t seen him in a few months. Jacob had dropped out of high school and was working full time at his family’s auto body shop. He was so close to graduating but was lured away by the thought of making his own money.
Lanette didn’t see him often in his last few years. She was dealing with drug addiction and spent time in jail. She didn’t realize when her brother also started using drugs.
She couldn’t be around him when she got out of prison. She herself was barely clean.
Jacob realized his life needed to change, Lanette recounted. He was living on the street and tried to go to rehab, but jumped out of the car on the drive there.
“He wasn’t ready yet,” Lanette said. He only needed more time, she said. Then he was murdered.
Lanette refuses to think of her brother’s case as cold, even though eight months have passed without an arrest. His name tattooed on her forearm is a reminder that he’s always with her.
The stories give her hope that his killer will one day be caught.
She’s heard he was killed in a fight after someone tried to jump him, and she’s heard that a specific person was there. Lanette doesn’t know if any of the stories are true, but there is promise in the idea that someone out there knows something.
If only they would come forward. Some nights, she lies awake and wonders what could have happened to cause someone to kill him and why no one will come forward.
“Why can’t you just speak up if you see our family’s hurting?” she asked.
She’s relayed all the stories to Phoenix police. She said the detective on the case told her he’s doing everything he can. Silent Witness even offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Lanette says it’s not enough. She said she’s heard little from investigators in the eight months since her brother’s murder.
“I don’t feel like they’re really handling the situation at all,” she said. “And if they are, then I apologize, but it doesn’t feel that way. We feel like we’re lost in the sand.”
Sgt. Maggie Cox, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix Police Department, said the case is still open and no arrests have been made.
Unsolved murders
Jacob’s killing was one of the 27 murders that went unsolved in Phoenix in 2019. Phoenix police cleared 72% of the 97 homicides this year.
Approximately six of the cases are still being reviewed by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Also, The Republic did not include police shootings when calculating clearance rates.
Statistically, a case is deemed to be cleared if there is an arrest, a warrant issued for an arrest, or if the killer dies. It can also be deemed cleared if the case is ruled a justifiable homicide.
The average clearance rate in Maricopa County is just below 85%. However, this number can be slightly inflated by smaller departments that only see one or two murders per year. Most larger Valley cities have a clearance rate in the 60% or 70% range.
❚ Chandler: 100% clearance with six murders.
❚ Gilbert: 100% clearance with one murder.
❚ Goodyear: 100% clearance with one murder.
❚ Peoria: 100% clearance with one murder.
❚ Scottsdale: 100% clearance with three murders.
❚ Surprise: 100% clearance with two murders.
❚ Mesa: 71% clearance with seven murders.
❚ Phoenix: 71% clearance with 97 murders.
❚ Glendale: 64% clearance with 14 murders.
❚ Tempe: 62% clearance with eight murders.
High-profile murders by strangers
The shocking story of a pregnant Lyft driver allegedly stabbed to death by her passenger was one of the most highprofile murders of 2019.
The murder of Kristina Howato and the arrest of Fabian Durazo seemed to strike a primal fear in the public of being randomly killed by a stranger.
Howato was working as a Lyft driver on Jan. 27 when she picked up her passenger, whom police identified as Durazo, in Tempe shortly after 1 a.m. The 39year-old was pregnant with a baby girl and had two other children, ages 2 and 4.
During the ride, police allege, Durazo began repeatedly stabbing Howato outside an apartment complex. Howato was able to escape the car, but Durazo continued to attack her, police say.
He then drove off in her SUV, seemingly leaving her to die in the parking lot, according to police. Howato and her unborn child later died at the hospital.
Police say they used GPS-locating technology in Howato’s SUV to track Durazo, finding him 150 miles away near the California border. He was arrested on Interstate 10 near Quartzsite.
“This is definitely one of those incidents that really is going to affect the police department for a long time and the community will think about this for a long time,” former Tempe police spokesman Sgt. Ronald Elcock said during a media briefing following the murder.
Then came the random road-rage shooting of 10-year-old Summer Bell Brown in April.
Summer Bell and her family were driving home when they noticed a white Ford F-150 following their vehicle closely, according to a police statement.
The truck stopped behind them when the family pulled into the driveway. The driver, whom police later identified as 20-year-old Joshua Gonzalez, then opened fire.
Summer and her father were both shot and taken to a hospital, where the child later died.
The driver fled after the shooting. Police say they linked Joshua Gonalez and his truck to the shooting through multiple tips and surveillance video. He was arrested and charged in Brown’s death.
Howato and Brown’s murders were unusual. Stranger homicides are uncommon, Pizarro-Terrill said.
“The reason people are panicked by stranger homicides is because they’re uncommon and get more media play,” Pizarro-Terrill said.
“It’s natural to be concerned about what you don’t know.”
Sixteen of the 181 people murdered in Maricopa County in 2019 were killed by someone they didn’t know — less than 9%, according to the database compiled by The Republic.
The Republic wasn’t able to identify whether there was an existing relationship in approximately a third of the killings.
Nationally, 10% of murders were committed by a stranger in 2018, according to data reported by law enforcement to the FBI.
Murder by family members
More than a quarter of all U.S. homicides in 2018 were committed by someone the victim knew, but who wasn’t a family member, according to FBI data. This might include a significant other, neighbor, friend or acquaintance.
Approximately 13% were killed by a family member.
The Republic identified at least 21 domestic violence homicides, including cases where someone was killed by a romantic partner, a child killed a parent or a parent killed a child. Law enforcement described five of those cases as murdersuicides. Arizona is the seventh deadliest state in the nation for women, according to a recent report by the Violence Policy Center. Women are more likely to be killed by a man, especially a boyfriend, partner or ex-boyfriend.
Alaska ranked as the deadliest state in the United States.
“There’s a pattern of females being killed,” Pizarro-Terrill said. “I’ve studied other places, but here we see a different type of pattern (in Arizona), and hopefully, we can uncover that to get better insight into what is going on with women.”
One domestic violence killing in Phoenix this year claimed the lives of two adults and two children. Police said Austin Smith, 30, killed his wife, two daughters and another man in April, claiming God told him it was OK to do so. Smith told police he suspected his wife was having an affair with his brother.
Smith is still in custody awaiting trial in the death of his wife, Dasia Patterson, his two daughters, Mayan Smith, 7, and Nasha Smith, 5, and family friend Ron Freeman.
The most common victim
Statistically, Pacheco was similar to dozens of others killed in Maricopa County in 2019.
The victims were overwhelmingly male and, most commonly, died of gunshot wounds. They were young — typically in their early 20s or 30s — and knew their killer.
The majority were Caucasian. However, it’s impossible to fully understand the racial and ethnic makeup of homicide victims in Maricopa County because the Medical Examiner’s Office classifies Hispanic and Latino subjects as Caucasian.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jeffrey Johnston said they use the apparent race of the human remains for body identification purposes, not demographics. The five current categories — Asian, Black, Caucasian, Eastern Indian and Native American — were chosen by previous administrations when the system didn’t have an option for ethnicity.
However, Johnston said they plan to adjust the categories to be in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics when a new database system is implemented in the coming months. They will start including ethnicity.
How we did this
The Republic has worked with the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office and local police agencies to compile a database on homicide statistics since 2016. Some cases take longer for a medical examiner to determine a manner of death, so a final count of 2019 homicides likely won’t be available until several weeks into 2020.
The Republic cross-references the Medical Examiner’s Office data with police and court records and its own reporting to provide a comprehensive look at homicides in the state’s most populous county.