Disturbing news out of Arizona, where three individuals shot and killed a man and his nine-year-old daughter during a home invasion and robbery. What’s most disturbing about the story, besides the fact that a child was killed, is the fact that two of the three perpetrators had connections to the Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigration group that conducts border watch activities in Arizona:
Jason Eugene Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, have been charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and other charges, said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona.
The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their 9-year-old daughter.
Their motive was financial, Dupnik said.
“The husband who was murdered has a history of being involved in narcotics and there was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location, as well as the possibility of drugs,” Dupnik said.
Forde is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a small border watch group, and Bush goes by the nickname “Gunny” and is its operations director, according to the group’s Web site. Forde was once associated with the better known and larger Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
In addition to their connection to the Minutemen, two of the three perpetrators also had ties to white supremacy groups:
Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.
“She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government,” he said.The accused shooter, Jason Eugene Bush, was charged Friday in the 1997 murder of a sleeping, homeless Hispanic man in Wenatchee, Wash.
“Bush has had long-standing ties to the Aryan Nations,” Sgt. John Kruse of the Wenatchee police wrote in a statement filed in Chelan County Superior Court.
While the actions of these three individuals shouldn’t reflect entirely on the organizations they were affiliated with, they do show that the xenophobic views promoted by organizations such as the Minutemen will inevitably serve as a draw for some individuals who may be racist and criminally oriented.
First of all these are CRIMINALS, and should be punished as such to the extent of the law.
Your comment ” xenophobic views promoted by organizations such as the Minutemen will inevitably serve as a draw for some individuals who may be racist and criminally oriented”
If the Minutemen are this way, then Please Ask Ted Hayes in LA( The Homeless Shelter supporter) why he and his friends are ALSO minutemen?
Your comment is just in this article to stir up racial issues, and that is called pulling the RACE card! We all know it and it doesn’t work any longer! There are probably more xenophobic views in the Red Cross than in Minutemen groups….Really…
Respectfully
I think the point is that we all need to call out the haters among us no matter if they are in our families, churches, schools, Red Cross, Minutemen, whatever….
If we don’t, then we are tacitly approving of their hate. If that is what you call stirring up racial issues, then sobeit. The hate needs to be exposed so that it can be countered.
I hope Ted Hayes and other Minutemen take a public vocal stance against hate. Maybe they already have. It’d be the right thing to do, if they haven’t done so already.