Of course the news of a shootout on a passenger train at a historic depot catches peopleβs attention.
Even more so when a federal agent is killed in the gunfire.
You can understand why outsiders, especially, would notice the story of a shootout on a train in Tucson β it revives their dormant Old West imagining of how our hometown must be.
But as shocking and spectacular as the details of Mondayβs killings were, the upshot was infuriatingly mundane: two people dead. Gunman Darrion Taylor and his victim, Special Agent Michael Garbo, represented homicide deaths number 71 and 72 in Tucson this year.
They werenβt even the last. The day after they died, two more homicides occurred in Tucson.
On Tuesday at about 4 p.m., officers responded to a call of a man having fired shots and pointing a gun at a person near East Fort Lowell Road and North Stone Avenue. Officers said they cornered him in the backyard of a business, and he fired more shots, prompting an officer to kill him. The deceased gunman was 23-year-old Donte Lorenzo Laster, police said.
Just a few hours later, about 7:45 p.m., police responded to calls about a fight on East 22nd Street near the southwest corner of Reid Park. By the time officers arrived, Jesus Camacho, 43, was fatally injured. It was a verbal altercation that escalated into a killing, police said.
A βhomicide,β by the way, is just a killing by another person. The word doesnβt suggest that the killing of Taylor or Laster by officers was a crime, just that people did it.
The fact that Garbo encountered Taylor in Tucson was just bad luck β it could have happened anywhere along the Sunset Limited as Taylor traveled from Los Angeles.
But it happened in a city reeling from killing to killing in a shockingly violent year.
The 74 homicides in Tucson city limits this year, police said, compare to 46 at this time last year. The number of killings in Tucson this year already exceeds the totals for each of the last three years.
Data from the Pima County Medical Examinerβs Office shows the pace has been fast since February in Tucson. After three homicides in January, there were seven in February, and the numbers peaked at 16 in July, a terrible pace.
Tucson isnβt the only city going through a scary spike. Nationwide, there was a 30% increase in homicides last year, the FBI just reported, and early data suggests it continued into this year.
There are three likely, broad causes: people being trapped together during the pandemic, economic distress from the pandemic recession and various outflows from the protests after George Floyd was killed in May 2020.
Those outflows include police leaving their jobs at big-city departments like Tucsonβs, officers pulling back from previous patrols out of necessity and discouragement, and the public simply getting more violent after a summer of protests and riots.
While the U.S. attorney general and the administrator of the DEA were in town this week to respond to Garboβs killing, people all over town have been responding in their own, less visible ways to losing loved ones.
I spoke to two mothers of victims of what could be described as βdomestic violenceβ homicides. But they werenβt the usual type: Both of them were men in their 30s; each was killed by a younger male.
Armando Padillaβs mother, Leslie Madrid, told me that Padilla rushed to a smoke shop on South 12th Avenue where his sister and her boyfriend were harassing Armandoβs father, not for the first time. It was the afternoon of April 30.
Padilla, 37, ended up being chased and hit by the driver of a Chevrolet Tahoe. The boyfriend, Fernando Borquez, is accused of running over Padilla deliberately and is charged with first-degree murder.
Anthony Watkinsβ mother, Mary Gastelum, told me her son had a dispute with the son of his girlfriend. The boy, 16-year-old Lashaun Jayvion White, is accused of opening fire and killing Watkins, 35. Now he stands charged with second-degree murder.
βWeβve got to do something about these kids with these guns,β Gastelum said.
It seems clear ready access to guns is one of the reasons behind this yearβs homicides surge. As my colleague Caitlin Schmidt reported earlier this year, one of the driving forces behind the increase is more verbal disputes escalating into fatal violence, usually gunfire. The vast majority of this yearβs killings have been by perpetrators using guns.
Lt. Corey Doggett, who oversees the violent crime units for Tucson police, said there are two main categories of slayings theyβre seeing: Crimes that escalate to violence, or domestic disputes that escalate to violence. Perhaps the key: how quickly conflicts go from verbal to fatal.
Thatβs meant that the Tucson Police Department, strapped by attrition and resignations, has taken an organizationally looser approach to investigating homicides. They draw in detectives from different units as needed. The results have been good: Police have arrested a suspect in the vast majority of this yearβs killings.
Often, it isnβt that complicated to identify the culprit, when two people argue in front of other people, then one shoots the other. But the arrest itself can be beneficial, assistant chief John Strader said.
βThat is a prevention tool for us,β Strader said. βItβs a continuation and contagion of violence. Solving one of those stops that continual flow.β
Of course, police have solved a lot of killings this year, and still they keep happening. The mayor and City Council have approved using $3.6 million per year of federal funds for a Community Safety and Wellness Program, additional to police efforts, but thatβs just getting started. Theyβve also approved raises for police to try to slow the attrition and compete with other departments.
The outlook could well improve over the long run if these efforts help. But right now the outlook isnβt very hopeful, even without a spectacular shootout on a passenger train.
