Widow sues Scottsdale after police shot and killed her unarmed husband

In early March 2025, Scottsdale police Sgt. Zack Fielding shot and killed 42-year-old Joseph Santos as Santos sat in his car. Though Scottsdale police neglected to mention it in their press release about the shooting at the time, no weapon was found on Santos, who was alleged to have brandished a pistol after committing a hit-and-run earlier that evening.

Now, a year after his death, Santos’ widow is suing the city over the shooting. In a wrongful death lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court in early March, Maria Santos blames the Scottsdale Police Department for her husband’s death. To employ deadly force, police officers must have “an objectively reasonable basis for fear for their own safety,” the lawsuit says, and because Santos was unarmed, that threat was not there.

Fielding is not named in the lawsuit because Scottsdale police had not identified him at the time it was filed, the lawsuit says. Phoenix New Times obtained the incident report about the shooting, which identified Fielding as the shooter. New Times has also requested the results of a Mesa police-led investigation into the shooting by the East Valley Critical Incident Response Team, but has not received them.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute the officers involved in Santos’ death in September 2025. 

The Scottsdale Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Neither the city of Scottsdale nor Santos’ attorney, Dominic Gomez, responded to inquiries. Gomez previously filed a notice of claim with the city on Santos’ behalf, demanding more than $15 million to settle her claim out of court.

“She will live the rest of her life with the knowledge that her husband’s death was the result of excessive and unnecessary police force,” Gomez wrote in the notice of claim. “Mr. Santos was unarmed and was therefore not a threat to the Scottsdale Police Officers or their lives.”

Santos came onto the police’s radar on that evening when a man identified as Karlos Martin called police to report that Santos had brandished a gun at him. Martin said he was looking out of the window of his unit at the Bixby Hotel on Scottsdale Road — where Santos and his family were also staying — when he saw a dark green Chevrolet Tahoe back into the front of his Dodge Ram pick-up truck.

Martin went down to the parking lot to flag down the driver and exchange insurance information, but the driver left the scene. Martin hopped in his own vehicle to follow the driver, per the police report, with both winding up at 76 gas station just across McKellips Road from the hotel. It was there, Martin claimed to police, that Santos flashed a gun at him in his waistband.

According to the security camera footage included in Scottsdale Police’s Critical Incident Briefing video released to the public in April 2025, the two cars pulled up to pumps at the gas station, after which Martin got out to tell the driver, later identified as Santos, that “you hit the truck, bro!” Santos exited his car and the two men circled Martin’s truck. Santos appeared to reach for his waistband — though the video does not clearly show any weapon — prompting Martin to run into the gas station’s convenience store to make a phone call. Santos returned to his SUV, drove aggressively toward Martin, then turned and drove away.

Martin told the gas station attendant and later a police dispatcher that Santos “seemed intoxicated” and had a handgun tucked into his front waistband, according to the police report. According to the notice of claim, Maria Santos’ attorney spoke to the gas station cashier, who said he didn’t see Santos with a gun at the time of the incident.

The Scottsdale police incident report on the shooting mentions that an uninvolved and unidentified person recovered a discarded Glock 9mm pistol in the playground area of Vista De Camino park the next morning, which police at one point suspected could have belonged to Santos. However, police never affirmatively connected the gun to the 42-year-old, who was pursued by police for much of the 15 minutes between the gas station confrontation and the shooting. Police never mentioned Santos exiting his car during that time, and when an officer canvassed the area of the dog park a few days later, he found no operable security cameras that would have shown who left the gun.

How the shooting happened

Using the department’s Real Time Crime Center, police were able to locate Santos’ vehicle near East McDowell Road and Granite Reef Road, where an officer initiated a traffic stop. Police said Santos failed to stop and officers did not pursue him; instead, an officer in an unmarked vehicle kept tabs on Santos’ whereabouts and could see he was returning to the Bixby Hotel.

Footage included in the video briefing appears to show Santos’ car entering the hotel parking lot, which was lit up by police lights. Police said Santos parked behind a patrol car and was boxed in by an unmarked police vehicle. At least two officers then approached Santos’ car from the passenger side with guns drawn and began shouting commands, which the lawsuit said created “a loud, confusing environment.”

Video shows Santos had his hands in the air before lowering them, prompting an officer to tell him to keep them up. “Shoot me!” Santos could be heard saying multiple times.

Officers then moved toward the front of the car, and body-cam video showed Santos stripping off his shirt and tossing it out the window. At one point, as Santos’ right arm dipped behind the passenger seat, Officer Derek Vusovich pushed a police dog named Rocco through the passenger-side window. At nearly the same moment, Fielding opened fire, shooting at least 12 times through the front windshield, according to the body camera footage and police report. From the video included in the briefing, it does not appear that any officer verbally called out that Santos had a gun. No gun was recovered from the scene.

Police fire also hit the dog in the face. The dog was transferred to Thrive Pet HealthCare, but survived and returned to full duty after being released from the hospital, according to Sempsis. Santos wasn’t so fortunate. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds in his chest and was profusely bleeding while only completing short breaths or not breathing at all, according to the accounts of individual officers in the police report. He was pronounced dead at 10:44 p.m., around 30 minutes after the 911 call was placed.