Photo: Facebook
Police in Arizona have arrested a 21-year-old man, accusing him of murdering his 25-year-old ex-girlfriend in a shooting that left a 29-year-old man and the man’s 3-year-old daughter wounded.
PEOPLE confirms Mateo Zavala is being held on $1 million bail for allegedly killing Marilynn Pacheco — who leaves behind a 7-year-old daughter — in a shooting that took place in Green Valley on Saturday at around 5 p.m.
Police responded to a call about gunfire being exchanged between two cars and arrived to find all three victims with gunshot wounds.
They were raced to Banner University Medical Center, where Pacheco was pronounced dead. The man and his little girl were treated and released.
Marilynn Pacheco.Facebook
Police confirm that Pacheco and Zavala “are known to each other,” but Pacheco’s mother, Susan Stemper,told KOLD the two had dated.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage?Click hereto get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
According to Stemper, Zavala was a jealous ex-boyfriend that would not stop contacting Pacheco after the split.
“He would always come back, he would threaten her every single time that he was going to kill her,” the grieving mom alleged.
Stemper hopes her daughter’s death inspired women in abusive relationships to take action.
“I don’t want Marilynn’s death to be unnoticed,” she said. “I want somebody, at least a person, to learn from it and to save themselves. I don’t know if this was preventable or not, but I just hope somebody can get away from situations like that.”
A GoFundMe campaignhas been established to cover the costs of Pacheco’s funeral.
The people who created the page described Pacheco as “a beautiful person who should have had her whole life ahead of her.”
source: people.com
