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TheFoothillsFocus.com
INSIDE
This Week
FEATURES ........ 18
Slider Throwdown fundraiser returns Sunday, Nov. 14
FEATURES ........ 21 Local director Robert Conway shoots scenes in New River
YOUTH ............. 24 ‘High School Musical Jr.’ comes to Desert Foothills Theatre starting Friday, Sept. 17
OPINION ......................7 FEATURES ................ 16 YOUTH ...................... 23 CLASSIFIEDS ............ 26 Zone I
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Serving the communities of Anthem, Desert Hills, Norterra, Sonoran Foothills, Stetson Valley, Tramonto, New River, Desert Ridge and North Phoenix
Anthem Area Edition
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Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Wife asking for tips in husband’s death BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI Foothills Focus Executive Editor
D
awn Fernandez was at the Roadrunner Restaurant & Saloon in New River on July 27, 2015, when she became tired. Her 48-year-old husband, Roman, said she should go home and put their grandbabies to bed. She returned to their Phoenix home and tucked them in. As they slept, she and her son watched television. At 1:30 a.m., the phone rang. The call changed her life. Her husband was dead. “My phone rang, and it was my son yelling into the phone that his dad was dead,” she recalled through tears. “A female voice got on the phone. I thought it was my daughter-in-law. I said, ‘What kind of sick joke is this? Put your dad on the phone.’”
The “woman” was a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy. Dawn could not believe what she was saying. She put the phone down, walked into the living room and told her son something terrible happened. “I said, ‘There’s a woman on the phone, and I don’t believe what she’s telling me,’” Dawn recalled. “He went into the bathroom, and when he came out and he said, ‘You’re right, mom. Something horrible has happened.’” Roman was stabbed in the heart and the lower abdomen during a fight at the Roadrunner. “It wasn’t a targeted fight,” she said. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Frustrated at the lack of tips, Dawn has turned to the media to help garner leads in Roman’s death.
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Dawn and Roman Fernandez were Cactus High School sweethearts who married in 1988. (Photo courtesy of the Fernandez family)
Study shows flood risk areas, potential solutions
BY ALLISON BROWN Foothills Focus Staff Writer
T
heresa Pinto, Maricopa County Flood Control project manager, spoke at a monthly meeting co-hosted by Friends of Daisy Mountain Trails and the Anthem Community Council Sept. 10 via Zoom to discuss Adobe Dam, Desert Hills and Apache Wash flooding data found in an ongoing study.
“At the end of the study, we will have a comprehensive list of existing flood hazards and risks,” Pinto said. The study, conducted in partnership with Kimley-Horn, encompasses 140 square miles and includes the watersheds of Skunk Creek, Apache wash, Desert Lake wash, the Cave Creek dam and the Adobe dam. Parts of the city of Phoenix, unincorporated Maricopa County and the town of Cave Creek were in the study
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area. Of the land studied, 11% was within a floodplain, which Pinto said was significant. “The overarching goal of these studies is basically to reduce the flood risks for residents and the community,” she said. “So, that means reducing the risk for injury or, worst-case scenario, death but also impacts to property as well as public infrastructure
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