The 52-unit complex on East Lind Road where three people were killed by a man being evicted has changed hands three times in the last four years: for $1.5 million in 2018; $2.3 million in 2019 and $3.6 million in 2021 when it was purchased by self-described apartment flipper Kevin Easterly of San Diego.
It’s one of five Tucson properties now owned in whole or in part by Easterly, who made headlines earlier this year when he raised rents more than 50% at a Tucson senior citizens complex, forcing out those who couldn’t afford to stay.
The shooting occurred three weeks after Easterly hired a Tempe-based property management company to oversee all five of his Tucson properties, said Jeffrey Hanrath of Valley Income Properties, the management firm now in charge.
Hanrath said the property manager who died in the shooting, Angela Fox-Heath, 28, was his employee. Workers throughout the company are reeling, he said.
“I have 120 employees and a dozen managers, and they are all shook up,” Hanrath said. Also killed were Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay and a man in a neighboring apartment, Elijah Miranda, 25.
Hanrath said the shooter, identified by police as Gavin Lee Stansell, had “made some threatening comments” to other residents. “Obviously he wasn’t well. He had problems.”
Stansell committed suicide after the shootings, police said.
Hanrath said the company is contemplating a new policy that would require property managers to keep their distance when an eviction is in progress.
The Lind Road complex is used for “subsidized low-income housing” according to Pima County property records.
