Phoenix, Arizona — Shawna Forde, a leader in the Minutemen border watch movement, has been sentenced to die for the 2009 killings of a Latino father and his 9-year-old daughter in their home.
Forde, 43, was convicted last week of first-degree murder in the deaths of Raul Junior Flores and his daughter, Brisenia Flores. She was also convicted for the attempted murder of Gina Gonzalez, Brisenia’s mother.
Prosecutors argued that Forde plotted the home invasion, believing Flores was a drug dealer. She aimed to steal money to finance activities of the Minuteman American Defense (MAD), a splinter group of the Minutemen, which she founded to report undocumented immigrants to the Border Patrol.
In her testimony, Gina Gonzalez, the only witness in the case, gave a heartbreaking account of the massacre that unfolded May 30, 2009, at her home in Arivaca, Ariz.,13 miles from the Mexican border.
Gonzalez testified that her husband woke her, saying that police was at the door. Their daughter, Brisenia, lay sleeping on the couch with her puppy.
Brisenia Pleaded for Her Life
When Flores opened the door, he saw a woman standing there, accompanied by two men, later identified as Albert Robert Gaxiola and Jason Eugene Bush. They told him they were looking for fugitives. When Flores questioned them, Bush allegedly opened fire, fatally shooting him and injuring Gonzales in the leg.
Gonzalez played dead on the floor, and listened as Brisenia pleaded for her life, only to then hear the shooter reload his gun and kill the little girl. Her other daughter was spending the night at her grandmother’s.
Moments after the intruders left, Gonzalez called 911, but the woman returned with a gunman and told him to finish her off. Gonzalez, though, was able to shoot him in self-defense with a gun she had found in the house.
During the trial, defense attorneys Eric Larsen and Jill Thorpe argued that Gonzalez couldn’t positively identify Forde as the woman who invaded her home, and that prosecutors had no direct evidence to prove Forde was even there that day.
They also said there weren’t fingerprints in the home, or DNA that could tie her to the murders.
But Pima County attorneys’ Rick Unklesbay and Kelly Johnson presented evidence that Forde had attempted to recruit people to go after drug dealers. Text messages left on her phone also implicated her in the murders.
Authorities also presented the jury jewelry that belonged to Gonzalez found in Forde’s possession.
While Flores had a history of drug-related offenses, no drugs were found in the house.
Before the jury imposed the death penalty, they heard arguments from the defense to spare Forde’s life. She was presented as someone who had suffered sexual and physical abuse from one of her husbands. Thorpe argued she suffered a stroke that resulted in brain damage that impacted her judgment, leaving her open to manipulation.
Bush and Gaxiola will be tried later this spring and could also be sentenced to die if found guilty.
The Forde decision comes in the aftermath of January’s deadly public shooting in Tucson that left six people dead, including another 9-year-old girl, and injured 13 people, among them U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.