A slain Tucson police recruit was fighting armed intruders at the home he shared with his fiancée and their child when he was shot and killed, court records say.
The incident began about 6 a.m. Aug. 19 when the unnamed fiancée of Carlos Ramirez, 23, told investigators she heard banging outside the bedroom door of the couple's home near West Valencia Road and South Camino Verde, according to an interim complaint filed in Pima County Justice Court.
Ramirez
She told investigators Ramirez entered the bedroom and told her two masked men were inside the house and yelled for her to get a gun from their safe, the complaint says. While Ramirez was fighting with the men, whom his fiancée described as wearing dark clothing and balaclava-style face coverings, gunshots rang out.
People are also reading…
Ramirez, who had been shot in the chest, was dead when deputies arrived, the complaint continues. A former county corrections officer, Ramirez was days away from completing the academy to join the Tucson Police Department.
His fiancée, a 23-year-old Pima County corrections officer, had been shot in the left shoulder when she met deputies at the front door.
The complaint also says footage shows the SUV linked to the shooting was parked near the couple's home hours before the incident occurred, between 3:50 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Surveillance footage also showed the alleged getaway car, a gray Acura MDX, leaving southbound after the shooting, the complaint says.
Investigators also found surveillance footage showing two men they suspected to be involved at a nearby gas station about 40 minutes before the shooting.
While at the gas station, the complaint says, they bought two pairs of dark gray gloves, two red Boston hats and one San Diego Padres hat, according to transaction history.Â
Those two men were later identified as Alex James Barnett, 33, and Santiago Jorge Rogers, 39. The Acura linked to them was found on the city's southeast side on Thursday.
Rogers was arrested Saturday morning at a hotel on Tucson's southside, the Sheriff's Department said in a news release Saturday.
A third man whom authorities suspected to be involved was located but not placed under arrest, the Sheriff's Department had said.
Barnett, who has an extensive criminal record, remains at large.
No information on a motive has been released. No connection has been established between Rogers and Ramirez or his fiancée, the complaint says.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME, the anonymous tip line.
