Arivaca shooting suspect had dispute with victim

One of the men indicted in a home invasion that left Raul Flores Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter dead was on bad terms with Flores over marijuana, the victim’s wife told police the day after the killings.

A 250-page report released Wednesday by the Pima County Sheriff’s Office detailed the movements of law enforcement officers in the hours and days after the murders of Flores and his daughter Brisenia as authorities collared and questioned neighbors and suspects.

A gruesome scene awaited the first responding officer as he entered the home to find Flores and Brisenia, both shot in the head, laying on couches opposite each other in the living room. Shell casings and blood splatter covered the room, according to the report.

Flores’ wife, who was shot in the leg during the incident, was airlifted to University Medical Center where surgeons removed bullet fragments from her leg.

According to the homicide report, fingerprints found on a sawed-off shotgun left at the crime scene matched those of Albert Robert Gaxiola, who was indicted in the case Tuesday along with Shawna Forde and Jason “Gunny” Bush.

The woman told officers that Gaxiola “had gotten into a dispute with her husband the previous year due to the fact that (Gaxiola) was reportedly storing marijuana on their property.”

Flores’ wife gave descriptions to officers that matched those of the three suspects. She said the female intruder, who authorities believe to be Forde, was yelling orders to the two men and talking on a walkie-talkie throughout the incident, according to the report.

While the victim lay on the ground, she said she heard people speaking Spanish enter the house and rifle through her cabinets, but didn’t lift her head to look. When they left, she dragged herself to the kitchen and called 911, only to have the intruders return and engage her in a gunfight, which was caught on tape.

As officers were investigating later that morning, a woman, distraught and crying, approached to tell them she thought two men she knew only as “Albert” and “Oin” were responsible for the murders because of a longstanding dispute with Flores.

She said she had been staying at an Arivaca house with “Oin,” later identified as Oin Glenn Oakstar, 38, and his girlfriend, who had shown her a video in which he was shooting guns while making threats toward Flores. She added that he had numerous weapons, including an AK-47, in the house.

FIRST ARREST

Oakstar quickly became the first suspect in the case and was arrested later that morning in the middle of Arivaca.

A SWAT team raided the house where he was thought to be staying, but a woman there said Oakstar had left the house 45 minutes before authorities arrived.

He was soon found walking down a road near the house, but denied involvement in the murders and said he didn’t know who did it.

When deputies found several firearms in his home, Oakstar admitted that he had convictions for felony drug distribution charges and was not supposed to own guns, according to the report. He was arrested for being a “prohibited possessor in possession of deadly weapons,” according to the report.

Oakstar was released the same day on bond, said Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Deputy Dawn Barkman, and he hasn’t been charged in the murders, though the report still lists him as a suspect.

Flores’ wife told officers the day after the murders that she knew Oakstar, and he was “definitely not” one of the men she saw enter her house dressed in camouflage and face paint as part of the fatal home invasion. When asked about Gaxiola, she said his physical build and voice fit the description of a Hispanic man who she saw participate in the robbery.

ATTENTION ON GAXIOLA

Gaxiola was interviewed at his Arivaca home June 2, and told officials he had heard about the murders but was in Tucson at the time. Police searched his home and found firearms, camouflage clothing and other military-style gear, including a black tar substance that could be used for face paint.

Officers also found a teal minivan with blood stains on it parked in front of his home that matched the description of a vehicle Flores’ wife said she saw “suspiciously going past her residence” days before the invasion, according to the report. She said a man and a woman were in the van and waved to her as they passed by.

But Gaxiola told police that the items and the minivan belonged to Forde and others he described as “Minutemen” who were staying at his house while he was gone. Officers searched his phone and found several text messages back and forth throughout the night and morning of the murders between Gaxiola and Forde, who was nicknamed “White” in Gaxiola’s phone because, “He stated that she hates all ethnicity with the exception of Caucasians,” according to the report.

Gaxiola was not arrested until June 12, when he was taken into custody at a west Tucson McDonald’s.

Law enforcement officials also arrested Georgina Sue Moraga, 34, of Tucson, who was with Gaxiola and was wanted for violating probation.

Moraga has a long criminal record in Arizona that includes assault, possession and use of drug paraphernalia, several failures to appear and traffic violations.

She’s still in police custody, said Barkman, but she hasn’t been charged in the Flores murder case, though she is listed as a wanted person in the report along with Forde, Bush and Gaxiola.

All three were indicted Tuesday, each charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed robbery and aggravated robbery. They will be arraigned Monday.

Forde and Bush were members of Minutemen American Defense, a small, rogue group shunned by the national, 12,000-member Minuteman Citizen Defense Corps, and wanted to rob drug dealers to raise money for their border operations, according to the Sheriff’s office. Gaxiola helped in exchange for information about local dealers.

But little detail is given in the report about the arrests of Forde and Bush, who were detained June 12 in Sierra Vista and Kingman, respectively. Barkman said those records likely won’t be released for another month.

The report mentions that when Forde was arrested, police found a piece of paper on her that had GPS coordinates and “Sierra Vista Coronados Mexico-side spotter” written on it. She freely offered to authorities that it was information about drug cartels.

Several of Forde’s contacts have said since her arrest that she had been vocal about planning to infiltrate drug cartels to gather information and potentially rob them.