3 shootings bring city’s homicides to 13 for 2008
by David L. Teibel on Feb. 29, 2008, under Local, SpecialCops: Few leads in deaths of men found on road, in car
With the year only two months old, Tucson has had 13 homicides, more than a killing a week, within the city limits.
Last year there were 54 homicides in the city.
The latest slayings were a shooting death Wednesday night and two unrelated shootings Thursday.
“There’s not a whole lot to go on in either of these killings,” said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a police spokesman, said of the Wednesday night, Thursday morning shootings.
In the Wednesday shooting, a woman walking in the area of Laguna Street just east of North Stone Avenue spotted a man’s body alongside the road about 8 p.m. She ran to a nearby home and asked a resident to call 911, Pacheco said.
Police found Andre D. Donaldson, 35, of the 3200 block of West Cactus Tree Trail in the street. Donaldson was dead on arrival at a hospital, he said.
When officers and detectives arrived at Stone and Laguna, Pacheco said, residents told them they had heard shots but did not see anything.
Police have not determined a motive for the killing and have no suspects.
In the Thursday morning shooting, a man died as someone drove him to a hospital after he had been shot.
The man had several aliases and police were trying to identify him, Pacheco said.
Detectives think the man may have lived in the mobile home park in the 5300 block of South Park Avenue where he was shot at about 12:20 a.m.
The park manager called police and told them a bullet had just come through his window, Pacheco said.
Eight minutes later, police got a call from a person on a cell phone saying a person was driving near Irvington Road and South Nogales Highway on the way to a hospital with a gunshot victim in the car.
A state Department of Public Safety officer called police and said he had found the person in a car stopped by roadwork in the construction area at St. Mary’s Road under Interstate 10, Pacheco said.
Police called for Tucson Fire Department medics, who found the man was dead, Pacheco said.
Thursday night, a man was shot and killed after he and two or three others broke into a home on the 5800 block of Sanderling Drive.
The homeowner, in the house with his two-year-old child, was shot in the arm and returned fire, killing one, Pacheco said.
Authorities were not available to discuss the number of homicides this year because they had been called out on an officer-involved shooting.
This year’s slaying victims have ranged in age from 5 months to 48 years old.
Juveniles account for 25 percent of the victims, ranging from 5 months to 16 years old.
Gang activity has been identified as a factor in one of the killings, robbery in another, domestic violence in a third and drug dealing in two, police said.
An arrest has been made or an arrest warrant obtained for a suspect in half of the killings.
