When one of the sopranos in the Catalina United Methodist Church choir could no longer get herself to the church, Juan Cristóbal Flores stepped in to help.
It was no surprise to the choir’s director, Dane Carten, or anyone who knew Flores, an aspiring classical music vocalist who sang in a number of choirs, including the Arizona Opera and The The Helios Ensemble.
“He was so willing to just be like, ‘Yeah, I'll pick you up. I'll drive you, no problem’,” Carten said Thursday afternoon, hours after the 30-year-old Flores died from gunshot wounds he received in the Dec. 26 shooting at the Goodwill donation center on Tucson's southeast side. “It is such a loss, not only for his voice, but his personhood.”
“He was the kindest and warmest person,” said Marcela Molina, who had worked with Flores since taking over four years ago as director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus, where he sang. “When I think of him, I think of warmth and light.”
Flores was working on the morning of Dec. 26 at a donation center in the 7600 block of East Valencia Road, near South Kolb Road, when he and a female coworker were shot.
Flores died at about 7 a.m. New Year's morning, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said in a news release.
Juan Cristobal Flores
The unidentified female coworker also was critically injured in the attack.
Early Tuesday, Pima County Sheriff’s investigators arrested Adrian William Orozco, 40, in connection with the shooting.
Orozco, an ex-con, once worked for Goodwill, his attorney said at his initial court appearance Tuesday night.
No motive has been given for the attack.
Orozco was being held at the Pima County jail on suspicion of multiple felony charges, including two counts of second-degree attempted murder, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of aggravated assault causing serious physical injury, one count of auto theft and one count of armed robbery.
Updated criminal charges had not yet been filed.
The shooting stunned Flores’s friends and family members, including his mother, Alma Flores.
"I never thought I was going to be in this situation," she said during the news conference Monday at St. Joseph's Hospital while investigators still were searching for the gunman. "He was working. He was not in the bar, he was not in the street. He was working."
Longtime friend Abi Juganaru heard the news about the Goodwill center shooting from a UA pharmacy program classmate. She knew that Flores, who she had met when she was an undergrad vocal music major in 2022, worked there on Fridays. She was hoping he had called in sick, noting he'd been coughing when she last spoke with him.
“I texted him, and he didn't text me back,” Juganaru said. “I called him; he didn't answer. I waited until his work shift was supposed to be over, and I called him; no answer. And so I started calling hospitals, and I left my contact with St Joe's, and the emergency contact, Jackson (Veneklasen).”
That night, Veneklasen called her with news that Flores’s prognosis didn’t look good.
The shooting was the second time Juganaru has had someone close to her die from violence. In September, her friend and fellow cyclist Enrique Mercado was stabbed to death while riding on The Loop. She said she leaned on Flores to help get through her grief.
“For this to happen on Friday, I was like,’ God, I've been telling you how thankful I am that (Juan) is in my life just healthy and alive’,” she said, calling Flores one of the most “innocent souls and kindest and most generous spirits that I've ever met.”
“It's extremely painful that something has happened that is similar to that event in September,” she said. “It's very hard for me right now.”
During Monday’s news conference, Flores’s father, Reyes, said his son was shot in the head and suffered “very serious” injuries.
“He just grew up and was what he was,” the father said, pointing out that he was talking about his son “in the past tense ... because it seems that he no longer could be 100% what he used to be.”
During a recent Helios Ensemble concert, Juan Cristóbal Flores sang a solo. Helios was one of several choirs that Flores sang with over the past decade. Flores died Thursday from gunshot wounds he received in a shooting at the Goodwill donation center on Dec. 26.
Flores, a lyric baritone, had spent the days leading up to the shooting doing what he loved best, singing.
He was part of the TSO Chorus performing its annual “Messiah” concerts with the orchestra at Catalina Foothills High School Dec. 20 and 21 and sang in Christmas Eve services at Catalina United Methodist Church, where he had been a paid member of the choir for a decade as part of the church’s Scholar Singers program.
Flores was supposed to solo in The Helios Ensemble’s Bach Cantata concert in March.
Lyric baritone Juan Cristóbal Flores, who died from gunshot wounds he received in a shooting Dec. 26 at the southeast side Goodwill donation center, had a solo with Neoteric Chamber Choir. Dane Carten, who conducted Flores at Catalina United Methodist Church at Helios Ensemble where Danes is an assistant conductor, started Neoteric three years ago.
“I still I can't believe he's gone,” said Helios Music Director Benjamin Hansen. “I think I'm in shock; I still think I don't believe it.”
Members of Hansen’s choir and several others including the TSO, UA Symphonic Choir and Catalina church will perform a concert in Flores’s memory at 7 p.m. Jan. 16 at Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway.
