Homicides rose in 2020 in Maricopa County

For years, Ronald Makinson drank alcohol instead of taking his prescribed anti-depressants to ease his symptoms of depression. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, he worked from his home in Mesa, where he lived with his wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law and a family friend.

Being at home for longer periods gave him more time to “sit around and drink,” sometimes up to two 18-packs a day, his son said. Makinson, 49, who sold insurance, was a gun collector. When he was short on cash, he would pawn some of his arsenal for beer money, the son said.

Andrew Makinson, 23, said he feared his dad one day could start shooting indiscriminately during a drunken rage.

On the night of Nov. 20, during an argument over a home-improvement project, Makinson shot his 45-yearold wife, Rebecca Vanderwall, in the head with a .45 caliber pistol. He fired another round into his daughter’s face.

Then Ronald Makinson turned the gun to his head, letting out a final round.

Only the 20-year-old daughter, Melanie Makinson, survived.

“When he was sober he was a great guy, and that’s who my mom fell in love with,” the son said of his father. “But when he drank, he changed. Kinda like Jekyll and Hyde.”

Rebecca Vanderwall’s death is one of the 320 homicides in Maricopa County in 2020.

The number of deaths rose 38.5% from 2019, when there were 231 cases.

Across the country, police and criminologists say, a historic surge of homicides stems in part from the pandemic. The average increase in 34 large American cities, including Atlanta, Chicago and Denver, was 30%, according to a study done by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice.

While it’s been a historic surge, experts say the homicide rates are well below those of decades like the 1990s, in which many communities set records, and it’s too early to know if the trend will continue into 2021.

For comparison, Phoenix had 247 homicides in 2003, well above the city’s 200 homicides in 2020, according to a police spokesperson.

For many families, the pandemic has created economic and educational instability. For others, criminologists say, the stress has led to a more grim outcome: a relative killing another relative in an episode of rage.

While a clear cause hasn’t been determined for why homicides in Maricopa County and the country have gone up, many theories and data are being studied. Criminal justice experts have three theories about the rise in homicides in 2020:

● COVID-19 created stressors that could lead to people killing other people.

● People bought guns in record numbers.

● The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis led to a greater mistrust of police officers. Studies show that after a high-profile police case, people may not call the police to report disturbances, particularly in communities vulnerable to violent crime.

The Arizona Republic used data from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office to calculate approximately how many homicides occurred in 2020.

The medical examiner rules on the cause and manner of each suspicious death. The figure includes all deaths in which people are ruled to have died at the hands of another, including law enforcement officers. But it may not include deaths that occurred near the end of the year on which rulings have not yet been made.

The huge increase in 2020 also was an anomaly from recent years. In 2018, Maricopa County had 244 homicides; in 2017, 256; and in 2016, 275.

Phoenix, the most populous city in the state and the fifth largest in the country, saw increases in domestic-related killings and gun violence in 2020. And the number of homicides increased in the second half of the year compared with the first.

The most homicides occurred in ZIP code 85021, the 6.7-square mile area between Peoria and Glendale avenues and Central Avenue and Interstate 17.

Phoenix police reported that about 3 out of every 4 homicides was cleared in 2020, which is above the national average.

Stresses related to the pandemic

One factor in the spike in homicides is COVID-19. The pandemic led to businesses shuttering, which put more people out of work.

Jesenia Pizarro-Terrill, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said that high unemployment at any given time can lead to a spike in homicides.

“This is something that we’re seeing throughout the country, a spike in homicides. And there could be multiple things attributing to it. It could be due to the stresses related to the COVID pandemic,” she said. “It could be due to increases in joblessness. We know that unemployment is a correlate for an increase in homicides.”

She also said that she expects a rise in the rate of murder-suicide cases, when people kill someone before they kill themselves.

“Another thing that we do know about murder-suicides is that they’re highly correlated with intimate partner cases,” she said. “And given the economic stresses and coupled with potential psychological stressors in the home, I would not be surprised if we see a spike in those as well.”

Phoenix police say they saw an increase in domestic violence cases in 2020 compared with the year before.

Sgt. Mercedes Fortune, a Phoenix Police Department spokesperson, said: “Pinpointing the cause of the homicide increases is difficult to do, but it’s clear that domestic violence has played a role.”

She said that Phoenix had 43 domestic violence-related homicides out of 200 in 2020, compared with 18 out of 139 in 2019.

Previously The Arizona Republic found that in March 2020, Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa and Chandler saw a rise in domestic violence 911 calls compared with the same month in 2019, according to data from each city’s police department.

A surge of gun violence

Another theory for the spike in homicides is the record number of gun sales in 2020.

In 2020, Americans purchased an estimated 23 million guns, a 65% increase from 2019, according to the research firm Small Arms Analytics.

According to a study done by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis, more gun sales could lead to more gun violence.

“Surges in firearm purchasing, which acutely increase the prevalence of firearm ownership, have been well documented in association with mass shootings and significant political events and are followed by population-level increases in firearm violence,” the study says.

Fortune said that in 2020, the city “also saw a dramatic increase in gun violence.”

According to the Police Department’s analysis, there was a 44% increase in gun-related violent crimes in 2020 compared with the year before.

Mass protests over police killings

A third theory of why homicides may have gone up is tied to the mass protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day 2020.

According to a study by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank that researches crime trends and policies, homicides across the country started to spike after the mass protests began in late May and early June.

The study says after the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, homicides also increased in some cities by 22%. The reason could be twofold, the study says: Officers are scaling back on fighting crime because they are worried they would be “unfairly scrutinized.” Or, fewer people call police less often because of “breached trust and lost confidence” in officers.

“While it remains unclear how much these theories explain such increases, it is clear that no simple connection exists between police violence, protests against such violence, and community violence,” the study says.

Steady uptick for most of the year

In Phoenix, the upward trend in homicides began before the mass protests, according to police data.

There were 44 homicides in the first quarter of 2020, up from 30 in the same quarter the year before. In the second quarter of 2020, there were 49, up from 44 in the same quarter in 2019, There were 56 homicides in the third quarter, up from 29 in the third quarter of 2019. In the fourth quarter, there was 51 compared with 36 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The Republic was able to identify the address of 80% of the cases in which a homicide occurred in Maricopa County. In ZIP code 85021 in north-central Phoenix, there were 17 homicides, the most in Maricopa County ZIP codes, according to The Republic’s analysis.

The 6.7-square-mile area is between Peoria and Glendale avenues and Central Avenue and Interstate 17, where its 43,300 residents have a median age of 35 years old.

Of the 200 homicides in Phoenix, police have cleared 74% of the cases, above the national average of 61.4%, according to Phoenix police data.

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.

‘Talk to each other’

Andrew Makinson said he and his wife had moved into his parents’ house because they had recently lost their jobs.

On the day of the shooting, Ronald Makinson began to use a grinder to cut some material inside of a bedroom where the family had recently put in a new carpet.

Rebecca Vanderwall took the grinder away and it made her husband mad, according to a police report. They started to argue.

“I don’t want to hate you but you’re making it real hard not to. Just go to sleep,” Rebecca Vanderwall told her husband, according to the police report.

Inside the couple’s bedroom, Ronald Makinson grabbed a .45 caliber pistol, shot his wife, who was in the bathroom, then his daughter, Melanie, before he turned the gun on himself.

Andrew Makinson said he and his wife are caring for his sister, Melanie, who has been recuperating from the gunshot.

He said his sister still has the bullet in her neck, where the bullet traveled to, and wore a brace for a few months. As part of the recovery process, he said, his sister relearned how to walk and move her right arm.

“Families are important and you should treasure them,” he said.

He said that he understands that families are going through stressful times but that there are better ways to handle problems.

“Talk to each other. You shouldn’t need alcohol to be around your family,” he said.