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Ray Arredondo

Age : 35

Gender : Male

Race : Latino/a/e

Date : 08/25/2021

Location : 8730 E Broadway Boulevard

City : Tucson

County : Pima

State : Arizona

Agency : Tucson Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during confrontation

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 08/25/2021, at approximately 8:02 p.m., Tucson Police Department officers responded to an armed robbery at the Walgreens pharmacy at 8730 East Broadway Boulevard near South Camino Seco. Police alleged that 23-year-old Ray Arredondo entered the store armed with a handgun and robbed the pharmacy.
Police identified and tracked the vehicle associated with the robbery using patrol officers, a police K-9 unit and the Tucson Police Department Air Unit. Officers briefly pursued the vehicle until it crashed through a gate at 8250 East Golf Links Road near Sarnoff Drive. The 31-year-old driver was taken into custody at the crash site, while Arredondo ran from the vehicle.
Police continued searching for Arredondo. Investigators said he reached Lakeside Park, where he pointed a handgun at a man and took a minivan. Police subsequently located the minivan near East Stella Road and South Camino Seco. Arredondo left the vehicle and barricaded himself inside a shed attached to a nearby residence.
The Tucson Police Department SWAT team was called to the residence. The barricade continued into the early morning of 08/26/2021. At approximately 1:00 a.m., SWAT officers entered the shed and found Arredondo dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
This case should therefore not be classified as a fatal police shooting. Arredondo died by suicide after the armed-robbery investigation developed into a police pursuit, foot search, carjacking investigation and SWAT barricade. Under the database criteria, the appropriate classification is suicide under police duress.
A deeper search of Tucson Police Department's published critical-incident records also indicates that there was no fatal Tucson police shooting on 08/25 or 08/26/2021. The department's 2021 critical-incident index lists an officer shooting on 08/20, followed by the next fatal police shooting on 10/05. That substantially strengthens the conclusion that the old links describing a “fatal officer-involved shooting” were misleading, broken, or later repurposed and that Arredondo was not shot by a Tucson officer.
Because police did not shoot Arredondo, there is no shooting officer to identify for the Officer(s) field. The available reports also do not identify the individual patrol, K-9, Air Unit or SWAT officers involved in the pursuit and final entry into the shed. I searched specifically for later Tucson Police critical-incident records and officer-identification material but did not find names that could be reliably attached to this case.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.kold.com/news/tucson-police-officer-involved-shooting-east-broadway
https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/tpd-investigating-fatal-officer-involved-shooting
https://tucson.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/officer-involved-shooting-under-investigation