"All I heard was pop, pop, pop, pop! -- four shots. And I turned, and I see the cop fall. 'Okay, should I get out of the car to fuckin' help this cop?'"
But Chris Wilson didn't.
Dominic Bugatto
A traffic stop turned fatal for Officer David Uribe.
Dave Uribe's widow, Kerry
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"I drive down the road," he continues, "drive around the fuckin' corner, I get out of the car, bail out. [Donnie] just screams that he's gonna burn the car."
Wilson says he heard more shots as they abandoned the Monte Carlo, and that he was unsure if Donnie had been "shooting at me or shooting at the car." (Investigators later found bullets in the tire well, which suggests that the shooter had been trying to blow up the car -- and destroy any evidence -- by exploding what he'd thought was the fuel tank.)
Wilson says he saw Donnie pulling apart the murder weapon, and then watched as he tossed the pieces over a wall on the west side of 31st Avenue.
"How did Donnie act about all of this?" Ballentine asks.
"Honestly, sir, he was perfectly calm until his picture come on that fucking TV."
Though he's been cooperative, Chris Wilson, too, has hurt himself with his statements: He's admitted to handing a loaded gun to a guy who was talking about killing a cop for days. And then he'd stayed on the lam with the killer until the jig was up.
Prosecutors give the okay to also charge Chris Wilson with first-degree murder.
Before he's moved to the county jail, Wilson offers to show Jack Ballentine precisely where Donnie Delahanty tossed the murder weapon.
At 12:30 a.m. on Friday, May 13, two patrol officers drive the shackled Wilson back to 31st Avenue. He immediately directs Ballentine to a stand of oleander bushes that abut a wall that runs along the street.
Soon, he's taken back downtown, to the Maricopa County Jail.
About 35 Phoenix police officers are sent out to look for the gun parts. By about 3 a.m., the cops have found every part of the weapon except its extractor rod -- an important piece because it's known as a gun's "fingerprint."
The next afternoon, an officer finds the telltale part in a gutter on 31st Avenue.
When Jack Ballentine finally falls asleep late on the morning of May 13, he dreams of being inside a white circle alone with Dave Uribe.
People are looking in from outside the circle, but he can't see their faces because it's dark out there.
The dream repeats for five consecutive nights.
On May 17, more than 7,000 people attend the officer's funeral at Radiant Church in Surprise.
After the service, the funeral procession makes the sad trip down to the Greenwood Memorial Lawn at 23rd Avenue and Van Buren Street.
At the front gate to the cemetery, about 100 people, young and old, await the hearse that carries the slain officer. Few, if any, had ever met Dave Uribe, but they want to pay their respects.
Some are waving American flags. Many are crying.
As Uribe's body is poised to be lowered into the ground, the voice of a Phoenix dispatcher comes over the police radios of the hundreds of officers in attendance. The dispatcher pays a final tribute to a man who, truth be told, probably would have been embarrassed by the hullabaloo.
"This is the last call for Officer David Uribe, 4276," she says.
"923 Bravo. 923 Bravo. 10-7. Good night, sir. You will be deeply missed."
Her voice breaks before she closes with the words, "Frequency closed."
Postscript
A judge ordered Donnie Delahanty and Chris Wilson to stand trial on first-degree-murder charges after a preliminary hearing last August in Maricopa County Superior Court. They remain in custody at the Maricopa County Jail.
Prosecutors Vince Imbordino and Bob Shutts plan to seek the death penalty. The trial is scheduled for early 2007, though a plea bargain for Wilson seems likely, in exchange for his testimony against Delahanty.
Johnny Armendariz and Detective Jack Ballentine were the state's key witnesses at the preliminary hearing. Backseat Johnny seemed to bear up well under withering cross-examinations by the defendants' court-appointed attorneys. The defense attorneys accused each other's clients of murdering Officer Dave Uribe.
David York was sentenced last November 18 to three and a half years in prison for his role in the aftermath of the murder. York apologized to the Uribe family at his sentencing before he was led away in shackles.
