He is a lanky Hispanic man in his 20s who drives down the darkened streets of poor, predominantly Latino neighborhoods, blending in as he selects his targets. He either fires through an open window or gets out of the car to shoot from close range before driving off.
The Serial Street Shooter, as he has been dubbed, has killed seven people and wounded two since March in nine attacks that have sown fear in Phoenix and led to a police plea for the public’s help in a neighborhood where many are immigrants reluctant to come forward for fear of deportation.
The gunman strikes only after sunset and before dawn, and all but one of the killings have taken place in the city’s Maryvale section.
The victims include a 12-year-girl who was shot to death along with her mother and a friend of the woman. In the most recent attack, on July 11, a man and a 4-year-old boy escaped injury after the gunman shot at a vehicle they were sitting in.
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Investigators are checking hundreds of leads, trying to find out if neighbors or security cameras captured video footage of the killer. They have put undercover officers on extra patrols and are receiving help from the FBI. And they are hoping someone who knows the shooter comes forward.
“He has someone he has talked to about this,” Phoenix police spokesman Sgt. Jonathan Howard said. “This guy shot and killed a 12-year-old girl. We hope someone else’s conscience catches up with them.”
Experts on serial killers say that given the gunman’s brazen outdoor attacks, he will make a mistake sooner or later — if he hasn’t done so already.
Unlike other serial killers, who often stay in the shadows, this one has allowed witnesses to catch glimpses of him, enabling police to create a sketch they have circulated. Detectives also found shell casings at four crime scenes, though authorities will not say what ballistics revealed about the gun or guns used.
While Maryvale has a higher crime rate than many other Phoenix neighborhoods, police statistics show it has been getting safer in the past decade. But now some residents are staying inside after dark, abandoning a neighborhood custom of sitting out on chairs in front yards when the broiling summer heat dips below 100.
Taking a break from painting the ranch-style home he is renovating, construction worker Marco Garcia said that he is watching for suspicious activity, but that the man police are looking for — young and Hispanic — wouldn’t stand out in Maryvale.
The cars the killer has used — described by witnesses as a late-1990s brown Nissan, a late-1990s black BMW and a white Cadillac or Lincoln — are like the vehicles many Maryvale drivers own, Garcia said.
“Anyone who passes by here could be him,” he said.
Another complicating factor: Many Maryvale residents are immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally or don’t have their paperwork in order and fear they will be deported if they go to police, said Maribel Diaz, with a neighborhood watch group handing out fliers with the sketch of the gunman. Those fears stem from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement and Arizona’s tough anti-immigration laws, she said.
“It could be that someone saw something or looked at him or something but was scared and didn’t report it,” Diaz said.
Authorities have been tight-lipped about the evidence they have, but DNA from the gunman would be almost impossible to recover from the crime scenes unless the shooter touched one of the victims or left behind an object, said Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.
The first shooting happened on March 17, when the Nissan drove past three teenagers in Maryvale and pulled a U-turn. A police report said the driver was wearing a hat and fired a handgun, hitting a 16-year-old boy in the arm, abdomen and hip. He survived and described what he saw.
Diego Verdugo-Sanchez, 21, became the killer’s first fatal victim on April 1, when he left his girlfriend’s mother’s home to lock his sport utility vehicle. He was hit three times in the torso and twice in the chest.
One witness claimed to have seen a person in the back seat of a car that left after the killing, leading police to warn that the shooter may have an accomplice.
Verdugo-Sanchez had a burglary conviction, and according to a police report, had used drugs in the past, giving rise to suspicions he was targeted because he had gotten mixed up in criminal activity, but police dismissed that possibility.
The deadliest attack came June 12 when the suspect stopped his vehicle, got out and shot dead Angela Rochelle Liner, Stefanie Ellis, and Ellis’ 12-year-old daughter Maleah as they sat in a parked car listening to music in front of a house. Liner had $2,900 with her but the suspect didn’t take it.
The serial killings are happening a decade after Phoenix was terrorized by the 2005-06 random shooting deaths of six people, with 19 more wounded. That case was solved when a drinking buddy of the two killers informed on them.
The Serial Street Shooter may “get bolder and bolder,” said Scott Bonn, a criminologist and sociology professor at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. “But eventually he is going to make a mistake.”
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Associated Press writer Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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