Pamela Garfield, a surgical nurse, ran to Cain to try to help him. But her brother-in-law told her to stay back, warning that Cain might be dangerous.
The store grew stone-quiet. Tom Samora threw up. Todd Garfield and McMillen say they also felt like vomiting. Garfield put his gun on a shelf and waited for police to arrive.
Ray Stern
Roger Garfield has been held at the Maricopa County Jail since his conviction was reinstated in January.
Bobby Cain (left) during a visit a few years ago to his family's home in Surprise.
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Garfield seemed callous in the days that followed, McMillen says. When she told Garfield she was upset over the stray bullet that could've killed her, she says he responded, "You should've ducked." She moved all her items out of the store the next day, returning only this month.
Samora also soon left the shop with his collection of antiques.
Ruby Sias, who hadn't been in the store that day, says she was so upset that she took a few days off. But Garfield didn't seem to be affected, she says.
"He told me, 'It's business as usual,'" Sias says.
Joel Hamilton, the antique dealer from across the street, says Garfield showed no remorse following the shooting. Hamilton explains that, a few weeks after Cain's death, he advised Garfield to talk to a psychologist.
"He said, 'I don't have any problem with what I did . . . He's gone now, and I don't have to deal with him anymore,'" Hamilton says. "I said, 'Maybe you're in shock.' He says, 'No, I don't have a problem with it, at all.'"
Ruby Sias quit after Garfield was indicted — packed up her stuff and moved to a different store.
At Garfield's trial, which took place last spring, Sias, Samora, McMillen, and Hamilton were among the witnesses who testified against him. The jury learned the truth of the incident with the toy gun, listened to Garfield's January call to 911 in which he threatened to take care of Cain himself, and heard from witnesses who felt Garfield overreacted to Cain.
Jury members couldn't agree on the second-degree murder charge on which Garfield had been indicted. But in handing down the manslaughter conviction, they tacked on a "dangerous" designation that requires him to serve a minimum of seven years in prison.
Still free at the time, pending the conclusion of his trial, Garfield blew off the verdict hearing, causing a bench warrant to be issued for his arrest.
After agonizing late into the night on the eve of the verdict, he says, he jumped in his car and drove back roads to the Grand Canyon, looking for a cliff to jump off — "one of the big ones."
The distraught Garfield called his girlfriend from a ledge, threatening to commit suicide. Law officers patched into the call, tracked him down, and took him into custody.
Garfield gripes that the prosecutor in the case, Susie Charbel, later told a judge the suicide attempt was "phony."
After coming back from the Grand Canyon, Garfield spent the next four-and-a-half months in the Maricopa County jail waiting to be sentenced. Then, over the summer, state lawmakers tried to come to the rescue of Harold Fish — and ended up getting Garfield released, instead.
His freedom, however, would prove short-lived.
Like Garfield, Harold Fish believes his gun saved his life.
And like Garfield, Fish shot and killed an unarmed, mentally unstable transient who kept coming at him, despite Fish's threat that he would shoot the man if he didn't stay away. The case has some striking similarities to what happened to Garfield — but in Fish's case, there were no witnesses.
The retired schoolteacher from Glendale had been out hiking the Pine Canyon trail, just south of Clint's Well, on May 11, 2004, when he ran into a local transient camped off a dirt road near the trailhead.
Grant Kuenzli, as the public would later learn, was suicidal and had problems controlling his anger. When Kuenzli's two dogs spotted Fish on the trail and ran toward him aggressively, Fish fired a warning shot at the ground with his Kimber 10-millimeter handgun.
The dogs scattered as Kuenzli started running down the trail toward Fish, possibly thinking that a bullet had hit one of the dogs. As Fish tells it, Kuenzli was waving his fists and screaming that he was going to kill Fish.
"I had to assume there was something in his fists — a pocketknife, a switchblade," Fish tells New Times. "You've got microseconds to process all this info, and he wouldn't stop."
Unlike Garfield, Fish was a firearms enthusiast who had trained with his weapon. He'd even taken a class in "unarmed attack," he says. On the trail, with a crazed stranger running at him and threatening his life, Fish made his decision.
"That gun came up, and I fired three of the fastest shots I'd ever taken," he says. "He pretty much fell right at my feet."
The immediate threat to Fish was over — but then came the legal maelstrom that sucked away Fish's money and freedom. The Coconino County Attorney's Office charged him with second-degree murder.
Fish, a father of seven children, estimates he spent about $500,000 on his defense. He still hasn't paid it off. He and his wife took out a second mortgage on their home; his father also mortgaged his own home. His brothers and sisters chipped in thousands. Just as important, large amounts of money began flowing in from the NRA and strangers who had heard about his plight.
