911 tape released in Arivaca shootings

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Details are emerging in the murder of an Arivaca man and his 9-year-old daughter as an associate of the suspects, the revelation of their troubled pasts, and the release of the 911 call further illuminate the gruesome events of May 30 and the days following.

About 10 gunshots can be heard during a minute-long gunfight on the 19-minute, edited call from the mother of Brisenia Flores.

“Get the (expletive) out of here,” she yells at one point.

After the shots subside, she told the dispatcher that the intruders returned to the house after they had shot her husband and child, possibly to retrieve a gun they had left behind.

The intruders were dressed in camouflauge and masqueraded as law enforcement officials, she said.

Pima County Sheriff’s deputies announced the arrests last week of three people in connection with the case: Shawna Forde, Jason Eugene “Gunny” Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola,

“They told us that somebody had escaped jail or something and they wanted to come in and look at my house,” the distraught woman said through tears during the call. “We were asking, ‘What’s going on?’ and they were saying, ‘You don’t have the right to ask any questions right now and we need to check your house.’”

When her husband, Raul Flores Jr., questioned them, she said, the intruders shot him and Brisenia in the head and shot her in the leg.

When they returned, she held them off with gunfire and managed to shoot one of them. That person was later identified by the Sheriff’s Department as Bush, the trigger man in the murders.

Forde and Bush were members of the Minutemen American Defense group, and were looking for money and drugs at the Flores home to fund their operations, according to the Sheriff’s Department, which said Flores was involved in the illegal drug trade.

Chuck Stonex, another member of the group who has since distanced himself from it, was visiting Arizona from his home in New Mexico at the time of the murders, and in an interview Tuesday said he bandaged Bush’s wounds at Forde’s request.

“I got a call that morning (May 30) that someone had been injured and they needed medical supplies,” he said. “They told me after the fact that they were injured by border bandits.”

Stonex traveled to Arivaca where Forde and Bush were hiding out at a safe house. He treated Bush’s wounds, which he described as minor, and returned to Tucson where he had a motel room.

Two days later, he spoke to Forde again.

“She said, ‘It’s getting real hot around Arivaca,’” he said. “‘We’re going to go to Tucson and rent a hotel room.’”

He met them in Tucson for dinner, then returned to New Mexico.

Stonex saw a television news report about the shootings and said he later was told by a Sheriff's detective that Forde and Bush were involved. He said he was in Arizona to meet friends and patrol the desert around Tombstone and had no knowledge of or connection to the Arivaca murders.

Stonex said a Sheriff’s deputy told him that Bush has admitted lying to him to get medical help and that he was being “cooperative” with authorities. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has said they are still pursuing leads on more possible suspects.

DNA evidence has tied Bush to a 1997 slaying of a Mexican transient in Wenatchee, Wash., according to paperwork filed Friday in the Chelan County (Wash.) Superior Court.

Hector Lopez Partida was stabbed seven times July 24, 1997, according to the report. He was able to walk to a nearby parking lot where he collapsed. When police arrived and he was asked, “who did this to him, he replied ‘Gavachos (white guys),’” according to the report. He died shortly after.

According to the report, Bush also has ties to the Aryan Nation white supremacy group and served prison time for several crimes including assault, possession of firearms and stolen property, stealing cars, and was the suspect in an attempted arson/fire-bombing.

Bush was incarcerated from late 1997 until 2003.

Gaxiola also has a history of criminal violations. He served eight years in prison for attempting to sell marijuana. He was released in 2000, according to court records.