Witness: Punches, stabbings, then shots in Bushmaster incident


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Flagstaff police investigate at Bushmaster Park where shots were fired and there was a triple stabbing on Wednesday afternoon. (Josh Biggs/Arizona Daily Sun)



February 06, 2013 5:20 am • ERIC BETZ

City maintenance workers at the scene of last week's brawl in Bushmaster Park described a chaotic scene fit more for the mean streets of Chicago than eastside Flagstaff.

The altercation left five young men with stab wounds, two shots fired and four arrested.
Police now believe that the two groups got together to fight at the park because of at least one, but possibly as many as three, drive-by shooting incidents stemming from a fight at a party last year. The most recent drive-by happened just after midnight last Wednesday.

Hours later, a maintenance worker watched a gold Cadillac with oversized rims speed into the parking lot of Bushmaster Park and four or five young men jump out. Police would later learn that the Cadillac had been shot up the night before at a home just north of the park.

A few minutes later, a black 2011 Lexus with tinted windows pulled in with music thumping, the witness told police, according to a Flagstaff Police Department report.
Three or four young men jumped from the other vehicle and the two groups started to fight.

Soon after, a man came running from the Cadillac with a foot-long butcher knife and started slashing and stabbing people, the witness said.

"This is a fistfight," one of the men from the Lexus shouted. "Get the gun. Get the gun."
One of the men then retrieved a .357 caliber revolver from the Lexus.

He started pistol-whipping two men who were beating up one of his companions. But the handgun didn't frighten the other men, not even when the man from the Lexus shot it toward a group of houses.

"Just shoot me," one of the men from Cadillac yelled as he stood in front of the weapon, the witness said, according to a police report.

Another man from the Cadillac wrestled the weapon away and pointed it at the original gun-wielder's head.

"Don't move, I got the gun now," he yelled.

The witness told police he felt compelled to try to intervene, believing an execution was about to take place.

"It's not worth dying for," he yelled at the man, a phrase he said he had yelled several times earlier in the fight.

This time, he got their attention, and the groups fled. Two from the Cadillac were unable to leave Bushmaster before police arrived. The two were later identified as 21-year-old Alfred Luke Garcia -- the man holding the gun last -- and Yves Araujo, 18. Araujo was bleeding into the snow and the revolver was at his feet.

Garcia told police he had been stabbed in the face and pistol-whipped.

Garcia said he had been the victim of a drive-by carried out by members of the other group the night before. He said they had no gang affiliation.

The Lexus was stopped at gunpoint at the intersection of Huntington and Fourth Street.
The man driving, who was not charged with a crime, said he was dropping off Jesus Armando Duran, 20, and his younger brother, 17, at Bushmaster when they were attacked. The driver had been stabbed in the ear. The teen started having an asthma attack and vomiting. Duran had a stab wound to his head.

The driver claimed he had heard the gunshot, but didn't know who had the weapon.
The four men were arrested and are being charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, among other crimes.

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