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C O M M U N I T Y P. 2 5 | O P I N I O N P. 3 1 | B U S I N E S S P. 3 4 | S P O RT S P. 3 8 |
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ROCKIN’ AHWATUKEE
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NEW BUSINESS
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LITTLE LEAGUE BENCHED
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BOWL OF DELIGHT
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D ’AT R I P. 4 3 | C L A S S I F I E D P. 4 5
Wednesday, April 1. 2020
Social distancing puts rabbis, pastors in bind .............. See page 11
A new normal dawns as schools to remain closed
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Giving life
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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tudents in Ahwatukee schools and their parents learned officially Monday what many probably expected for a while: they won’t be going to a classroom before August, when the new school year begins. Governor Doug Ducey and Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman extended campus closures through the end of the 2019-
see SCHOOLS page 9
Ahwatukee residents showed up Saturday at Desert Foothills United Methodist Church to give urgently needed blood as part of Mark and Kami Troutman’s semi-annual effort on behalf of their 4-year-old daughter Adelyn, Details: page 3. (Pablo Robles/AFN Staff Photographer)
A year later, questions remain in Ahwatukee shootout BY DEREK HALL, MACKENZIE SHUMAN, DEVAN SAUER, NICOLE LUDDEN AND JOSÉ-IGNACIO CASTAÑEDA PEREZ Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
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irst came the crash, reverberating off the walls of an Ahwatukee community like a “mini atom bomb,” then a barrage of gunfire shattered the desert morning calm. Neighbors scrambled for cover as rounds ripped through metal and cut into picnic tables. One woman hit her bedroom floor and called 911. Workers at nearby schools and day care centers worried whether they should go on lockdown. “It was a war zone,” said Frank Guy, who was in his yard when the shooting started. “I haven’t heard that much rapid fire in that short
of a period of time since I was in Vietnam 50 years ago.” Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were pursuing a suspected human smuggler they’d been tracking for days. In three unmarked pickups, four plainclothes members of HSI’s Special Response Team followed the suspect’s SUV as it exited Interstate 10 south of Phoenix, took an unexpected turn and headed into Ahwatukee. As the convoy barreled through the neighborhood, the agents decided to conduct a high-risk maneuver intended to force the SUV to stop. Instead, within seconds, an HSI pickup lay atop a downed tree halfway through a garden
block wall, the driver of the SUV was dead from multiple gunshots, and her four passengers, including the alleged smuggler and a teenage girl, were wounded or injured. The April 11, 2019, shootout in Ahwatukee, although extreme, was not an isolated incident. Since 2011, there have been at least 13 shootings involving HSI agents – most in 201819, according to an investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. It’s not clear how many HSI shootings have occurred in the U.S. because ICE officials refused to answer questions and the agency’s data is not publicly available. The Howard Center also found that at least five people had been killed and 11 oth-
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see SHOOTING page 18