Police look at realty scheme in killing at Chick-fil-A

Thomas S. Piazza, 39, was sitting in a booth in the Chick-fil-A at 4585 N. Oracle Road at about 6:45 a.m. when a man walked up to the table, pulled out a handgun and shot Piazza in the head, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.

Piazza was killed while waiting for the start of a weekly breakfast meeting he attended at Chick-fil-A as a member of the Northwest Tucson chapter of Christian Business Networking.

The shooter - who is described as a stocky man between the ages of 40 and 50, wearing a bike helmet, dark shorts and a dark windbreaker - walked out of the restaurant and rode away on his bicycle, heading westbound on West Auto Mall Drive, Pacheco said.

"There was no provocation, no exchange of words, nothing," Pacheco said.

Police continue to search for the gunman.

Piazza, a 1993 University of Arizona graduate, was married with four children. Friends described him as a kind, energetic man who was exceptionally devoted to his family and his faith.

"He was a great guy - always very energetic and always very uplifting to be around," business associate Tom Paluda said.

However, Piazza also was a defendant in a a civil fraud suit filed in June 2009 by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, and Pacheco said investigators' "working theory" of the slaying is that it is related to the scheme described in that suit.

The suit alleged that Piazza, a loan officer, and others in the local real-estate field took part in a scheme in which unqualified investors bought properties that would then be leased out on a rent-to-own basis. The suit says the scheme bilked 130 investors and 270 prospective home buyers out of between $2 million and $10 million between 2005 and 2007.

Several defendants have settled with the Attorney General's Office, but Piazza had not. He was tied to the scam through his work with Tucson Mortgage, the suit said. Piazza and others "deceived investors into believing that they could legitimately purchase multiple investment homes and get 100 percent financing with a maximum of $1,000 earnest money," the attorney general's complaint said.

The investors' homes were then to be leased out through a rent-to-own program, the suit said. Some original investors and renters who expected to buy the homes they lived in lost money in the process.

The suit said Piazza and others "deceptively profited" by arranging the loans, through which "numerous novice investors (along with some straw buyers)" bought multiple homes. A call made by the Star to Piazza's attorney, Alan Gooding, was not returned.

Piazza had been working for Geneva Financial since January 2009, Geneva President Aaron VanTrojen said.

He helped found the Christian networking group in April 2009 and was the president of the chapter, according to Star archives. He had arrived early for the 7:15 a.m. meeting, group members said.

"I think it's probably good no one else was here," said group member Suzette Howe, who arrived at the restaurant shortly after the shooting. "This is so random."

Howe, who runs a local media and marketing company called Praise Promotions, said she believes the man who shot Piazza had been at Chick-fil-A on several occasions when the networking group met.

"We had seen him before, and we knew he rode a bike," Howe said. "All we know is that he was there consistently when our group met. He would wear his helmet in the restaurant, which was kind of weird."

It was not the first time Piazza had been shot by a bicyclist.

About two years ago, when Piazza was working at Tucson Mortgage, 1660 E. River Road, he was shot in the parking lot after leaving the office in the evening, police and co-workers said.

In that case, Piazza confronted a transient at an outside garbage bin, and the transient shot Piazza in the leg before riding his bicycle away, Pacheco said. Police don't think the two shootings are connected.

Piazza didn't talk much about that incident, said Belinda Schweinsberg, who was Piazza's loan officer at Tucson Mortgage at the time and last year followed him to Geneva Financial.

Schweinsberg described Piazza as "a great Christian man" who belonged to Northwest Bible Church. "He was very bubbly and happy all the time," she said. "He always high-fived me at the end of the day."

J.D. Almond, who met Piazza at church about 10 years ago and became a friend, said he was "very, very active in his children's lives, camping and taking them hiking. He would not do a lot of things with me on the weekend because he was always doing things with them."

Contact reporter Brian J. Pedersen at bjp@azstarnet.com or call 573-4224; or Tim Steller at tsteller@azstarnet.com or call 807-8427.