Trial begins for Nogales rancher accused of killing unarmed migrant

NOGALES — Prosecutors told jurors Friday that rancher George Alan Kelly was inconsistent, evasive and biased against migrants after allegedly shooting an undocumented Mexican national on his property last year.

Kelly, 75, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen Buitimea on the rancher’s 170-acre property near the U.S.-Mexico border, east of Nogales.

In the trial’s opening statements Friday at Santa Cruz County Superior Court, a prosecutor pointed to Kelly’s hours-long failure to tell law enforcement that he had even fired his AK-47, after reporting to border agents that he heard a shot fired and saw a group of migrants on his property.

“That’s because he had something to hide. He knew he’d killed Gabriel,” Kimberly Hunley, chief deputy Santa Cruz County attorney, told the jury.

Kelly only admitted to firing his AK-47 when pressed by a detective late that night, 30 minutes into their interview, and after multiple conversations earlier in the day with law enforcement agents, Hunley said.

Kelly shot in the direction of a group of migrants passing through his property on Jan. 30, 2023, in what prosecutors say was an act of reckless disregard for human life.

Cuen Buitimea was unarmed, but attorneys for Kelly claim the rancher saw another group of migrants, closer to his home, who were armed with rifles, and he fired warning shots over their heads.

Kelly earlier rejected a plea deal that would have reduced the charge to one count of negligent homicide if he pleaded guilty, the Associated Press reported.

In its opening statement, the prosecution highlighted Kelly’s conflicting statements about whether he was inside or outside his home when he heard a gunshot, which his wife Wanda did not hear.

Kelly also initially told Border Patrol agents that a group of migrants was too far from his home for him to be able to see if they were armed. But later that night, he told a detective that the migrants were running with weapons and pointed the weapons at him, Hunley said.

Hunley also played a recording of Kelly referring to Cuen Buitimea’s body as that of “an animal — it’s not a vegetable or a mineral,” in reporting the body to a 911 dispatcher.

Addressing the jury, Hunley said, “I’m going to ask you to do something in this case that George Alan Kelly’s own words tell you that he did not do. I’m going to ask you to consider Gabriel Cuen Buitimea as a person, as a human being, and not, as George Kelly described him, as an ‘animal.’”

A defense lawyer for Kelly said he was “in shock” upon finding Cuen Buitimea’s body and struggled to verbalize it to the dispatcher.

“He cannot bring himself to tell her there’s a dead person on his property,” defense attorney Brenna Larkin told the jury in her opening statement Friday.

“He says these things because in that moment of shock and fear and discovery, he’s thinking, ‘They might think I did this.’ And he’s right, and his fear is reasonable. … Someone who’s not troubled by this might say, ‘Hey, I found a dead body.’”

Larkin argued that Cuen Buitimea was killed by the single shot Kelly heard before leaving his house, not by the round of bullets Kelly fired afterwards to scare a group of armed migrants he claims he saw.

The defense sought to portray Kelly as a compassionate man from the southeast who didn’t know what he was getting into when, 20 years ago, he and his wife purchased a property located in a “corridor of illegal traffic,” Larkin said.

Kelly initially had sympathy for desperate families he saw crossing his property, even leaving out water bottles at times, Larkin said. But he and his wife become increasingly fearful of smuggling activity and armed men on their property.

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Inflammatory text messages to be shared by prosecutors “illustrate his concern of being discovered unarmed on his property, and they illustrate his fear of possibly being confronted by armed people on his property, as he has been in the past,” Larkin said.

Prosecutors said they intend to present messages Kelly sent to a friend, including one in which Kelly claimed he dealt with 33 migrants with his AK-47, which was “hot!”

Larkin countered, “We’re talking about private conversation between two guys that’s crude, that’s over-exaggerated and that could certainly be offensive in some company. It was also never intended to be seen by anybody.”

Witness account previewed

Kelly is also facing charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon related to Daniel Ramirez, a witness in the trial who says he was with Cuen Buitimea when he was killed.

On Friday, Hunley related a narrative account from Ramirez, a Honduran national living in Mexico.

Hunley said Ramirez will testify that he and Cuen Buitimea went to the U.S. in search of roofing work. The pair was traveling with a larger group of migrants when they encountered Border Patrol agents, Hunley said. The group scattered, and Cuen Buitimea and Ramirez took off running towards the U.S.-Mexico border.

They were “the length of a football field” away from Kelly’s home, with two fence lines and a dirt road separating them from Kelly, when they heard gunshots, Hunley said.

Ramirez said he saw his friend grab his chest and say, “I’m hit,” before he fell face-first to the ground, Hunley said. An autopsy showed Cuen Buitimea was shot through the right side of his back and the bullet exited his chest.

“Daniel had to run for his life, because the shots were still ringing out all around him,” Hunley said.

Hunley said the bullet that killed Cuen Buitimea was never recovered due to the overgrown terrain and the long range of an AK-47. But law enforcement found nine spent bullet casings from Kelly’s AK-47 in his patio.

Larkin said Ramirez is an unreliable witness who made repeated false or inconsistent statements to law enforcement. She said Kelly was “browbeat” during a hostile interview with detectives after Cuen Buitimea’s body was recovered, and that the investigation into the victim’s death was biased from the start.

“The evidence will show the detectives changed Mr. Kelly’s words” and falsely claimed he made inconsistent statements, Larkin said. “The evidence will show that law enforcement doesn’t investigate any other possible explanation for Gabriel’s death.”

Mexican officials have called for justice in the high-profile murder trial. In a Thursday press conference, Marcos Moreno Báez, Consul of Mexico in Nogales, said the consulate is in close contact with Cuen Buitimea’s family.

“The Mexican consulate ... reaffirms its absolute support and solidarity with the victims of the case of Mr. Gabriel Cuen Buitimea, murdered on January 30, 2023 by impacts of bullet from a high-caliber weapon known as an AK-47, and reiterates its commitment to ensuring due process so that justice is done,” Moreno Báez said in Spanish.

Cuen Buitimea’s two daughters were also in the courtroom on Friday, sitting beside Moreno Báez. The women shared a box of tissues and were wiping their eyes throughout the opening statements.