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February 24, 2023 | 5:21 PM
An Arizona rancher was charged with killing a Mexican immigrant on his property last month and was downgraded from first-degree murder to second-degree murder.
George Kelly’s attorney, Brenna Larkin, filed an acquittal petition on his behalf Friday after prosecutors announced the change.
Santa Cruz County Chief Deputy Attorney Kimberly Hanley said the 74-year-old farmer for life opened fire on several unarmed border crossers with an AK-47 rifle, fatally wounding Gabriel Kuhn Buitimere, 48, as he tried to flee. claimed to have inflicted
Kelly countered that he thought he was surrounded by armed traffickers in a border town and shot them in the head in self-defense.
A detective who testified at an evidence hearing on Friday told the court that Kelly called authorities to report that he was being fired.
A witness said of Kelly exchanging calls with another agent, “He was talking frantically that he had been shot.” “He said he was being shot and he said he was shooting back.”
Witnesses said Kelly called the agent back.
“He said he wasn’t sure if he was shot,” said a witness. “He heard what appeared to be gunfire and he said he had been shot. But then he changed. He didn’t know exactly if he was being shot.”
Detectives said Kelly’s uneven memory ultimately led to his arrest.
Larkin refuted the testimony, arguing that investigators prematurely believed Kelly had committed the crime and distorted his efforts accordingly.
Detectives later interviewed Kelly and gave inconsistent accounts of the shooting.
“It’s the whole situation,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to arrest you.”
Larkin pressed the detective for an interview method.
“You pushed Mr. Kelly in this interview,” she said. “Shouldn’t that be fair? In this interview, why don’t you tell Kelly directly, ‘You shot him?’ You push Mr. Kelly in this interview. ”
Witnesses denied prejudice, claiming they wanted the farmer to acknowledge the “truth.”
A migrant traveling with Cuen-Buitimea, a witness to the killing, later testified that his detachment of eight border crossers was unarmed and that Kelly opened fire without provocation. .
“I saw Gabriel,” he said in court. “He held his chest and said ‘I got hit’ and fell down and rolled his eyes.”
Larkin claimed that Kelly did not shoot randomly that day, and that the area was notorious for violence and drug trafficking.
She claims that witnesses to the incident were tipped off by drug cartels to trap clients.
Prosecutors dismissed that theory, arguing that Kelly had no legitimate reason to shoot.
Kelly was released from prison on a $1 million bond. This is largely thanks to his $400,000 raised by Christian groups after GoFundMe refused to host a fundraising campaign.
The GiveSendGo page reads, “It’s a tragedy that simple farmers who should have been protected by the government were abandoned and had to fend for themselves.”
