A 74-year-old Arizona rancher, George Alan Kelly, faced second-degree murder charges in court on Friday for shooting Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, a migrant who was on his land, located adjacent to the southern border with Mexico.
Kelly had originally been arrested for first-degree murder, but the charge was downgraded amid growing questions surrounding the case, and after enough money was raised to meet his $1 million bail.
Kelly denies the murder charges, insisting that he only ever fired warning shots when he saw what he perceived to be a gang of cartel smugglers on his land.
A former Border Patrol chief, Rodney Scott, who was previously a supervisor in the area, suggested that Cuen-Butimea was likely a cartel drug smuggler or scout, given the area’s history of violence and cartel activity.
During the evidentiary hearing, Kelly’s defence attorney suggested that a rival cartel could have shot Cuen-Butimea, not Kelly, but that the cops tried to get him to admit to it anyway.
Prosecutors described Cuen-Butimea as an “innocent man who was shot in the back while running for his life,” and argued that Kelly emerged “unprovoked” with an AK-47 and started shooting at “innocent” men who posed no threat to his family.
According to Kelly’s version of the story, he called the United States Border Patrol Ranch Liaison on January 30, 2023, to report a group of Mexican men running through his land.
He claimed that the men were armed with AK-47 rifles, dressed in khakis and camouflaged clothing, and carrying large backpacks and that he only fired several shots from his rifle in self-defence, hoping to scare them away from his wife, animals, and home.
After they had fled, he found a body lying face down in the grass and called Border Patrol again, who found that the person had a radio with him and was wearing tactical boots, indicating that he was possibly involved in illegal activity.
Prosecutors, however, presented a different version of the story, alleging that Kelly began shooting at a group of approximately seven to eight undocumented immigrants travelling north through the Kino Springs area from Mexico with an AK-47, issuing no warnings and making no requests, which resulted in Cuen-Butimea’s death.
R.F-G and D.R.-R, who were with Cuen-Butimea, jumped the fence and made it back to Mexico, but are willing and available to testify.
»George Alan Kelly faces second-degree murder charges«
↯↯↯Read More On The Topic On TDPel Media ↯↯↯