The Phoenix Police Department’s “critical incident briefing” that detailed what happened next has been shared widely on social media. The briefings are narrated by officers and include edited compilations of body camera footage, dispatch audio and other information regarding an incident. Activists have criticized the department's decision to release edited videos, rather than complete footage, of fatal incidents.
Video from the briefing shows Reynoso running from two officers as they tried to grab him. The two officers pursued him on foot. "He's got a gun," one officer yelled as they ran. Then, the two officers shot Reynoso.
He did not survive.
In an interview with Phoenix New Times, Reynoso's family — including his teenage sister, who witnessed the shooting — pushed back on the narrative that has emerged about his death. His family wants answers — and justice.
"He was ours. They took somebody from us that meant the world to us," said Reynoso's mother, Yvonne Neal.
‘They didn't help us’
Police were sent to Reynoso's home on June 28 after a neighbor called 911, according to dispatch audio released by Phoenix police. The neighbor, who was not identified, said during the call that Reynoso was arguing with his wife and grabbed her by the neck. "It's not the first time he hits her," the neighbor said. The neighbor added that one of the couple's children had asked her to call 911.But Reynoso's wife, Maria Garcia, told New Times that the neighbor's report was false. There had been ongoing conflict between her family and their neighbors. "We didn't get along with them," she said. Garcia said that she and her husband had been arguing, but she insisted that Reynoso had not hit her.
"Everything that they said that he did was not true," Garcia said. "I don't know why they would say something like that, to make him sound like he's dangerous. He's not."
Garcia, now 25, had been with Reynoso since she was 17, she said. She had two daughters when they became a couple. "He took me and my kids in. He raised my daughters as his own," she said.
When police arrived that day, Garcia didn't feel like she was being rescued, she said. "They didn't help us."
The agency did not release footage of the couple's initial interaction with police. The edited body camera video, which Phoenix police released in July, begins as an officer talks to Reynoso, who is pacing back and forth outside, clearly distressed. Another officer was speaking with Garcia and a witness, police said. At some point, the officers determined that the assault allegation was credible.
Then, the officers went to grab Reynoso. "Put your hands behind your back," one of them told Reynoso. Instead, Reynoso took off running.
Family questions shooting
What's clear from the body camera footage is that Reynoso sprinted across the street, heading into the backyard of a nearby home, after officers tried to arrest him. At one point in the video, he stops running and appears to bend down to the ground. Then he walks away from officers.A few seconds into the pursuit, one officer suddenly shouted, "He's got a gun — hey, put it down. Put it down." Within seconds, both officers fired at him.
What's less clear from the video is what, exactly, made officers believe Reynoso had a gun. After his death, the department released photos of a pellet gun — a fake firearm meant to look like a handgun — that they said he picked up off the ground. Phoenix police said that they found the gun on the ground beside him.
The house Reynoso ran toward — where he lay on the grass after being shot — was the home of his sister's friend. His 15-year-old sister, Genesis Neal, was sitting on the patio within view of what had happened when he was shot, she told New Times. She said she did not see him point any weapon at the officers, and as the video shows, Reynoso's back was turned toward officers when he was shot.
Reynoso's family also was concerned by how long it took for him to receive medical attention after he was shot. Video of Reynoso lying on the ground after being shot, surrounded by five officers as he moves and tries to stand, has circulated widely on TikTok. Officers carried Reynoso to an ambulance after he was on the ground for several minutes.
His sister recalled begging officers to help him. "They were just looking at him and looking at me. They were looking at me like it was a joke — like me telling them to help him was a joke," Neal said.
"Nobody was helping him," Garcia, his wife, recalled, saying she, too, was asking police to respond faster to the shooting.
Phoenix police spokesperson Sgt. Brian Bower said that according to its records, Reynoso was shot at 8:52 p.m., and officers brought him to an ambulance six minutes later, at 8:58 p.m. Given the nature of the initial call, an ambulance was already standing by at the scene, he said.
"Officers decided to self-transport the individual to the ambulance," he explained, as that was "faster for life-saving purposes."
The names of the two officers who shot at Reynoso have not been released, and the department has not yet indicated whether the officers will face any discipline for the shooting.
Reynoso was brought to a hospital, police said, but his family was not able to see him while he was there. His mother recalled going from hospital to hospital without being told where her son was to try and find him. "He didn't deserve that," she said.
‘All he did was care for people’
Reynoso's family remembered him as a man deeply devoted to his family. He had an entrepreneurial spirit, his siblings and mother said, and was always pitching business ideas and working long hours in construction and landscaping. He taught Garcia how to drive and helped her with her English, she said. He taught his children how to make pancakes from scratch."All he did was care for people," Genesis Neal said. "He just wanted us to have each other."
"Juan was a happy person. He loved his family, his children, and they loved him as well," Garcia said.
Reynoso had no serious or violent criminal history, court records show. In February 2016, when he was 19, he was arrested and charged with shoplifting at a Target. He and two others had stolen some items from the makeup aisle, prosecutors alleged in court pleadings. Reynoso said he needed money to buy medicine for his family, according to the documents.
In 2022, Reynoso got in trouble for possessing a gun while on probation from the 2016 case. Court records show that Reynoso had taken the gun from a person who had shot him in the foot and stored it. Although details in the court records are limited, it appears that police found the gun when Reynoso was taken to the hospital for the injury.
In both of those cases, Reynoso received probation.
His death has taken a serious toll on his family. In late July, his son had his first day of kindergarten. "He couldn't walk him into class on his first day of school," Yvonne Neal said.
"My grandkids have nightmares," Neal continued. "My granddaughter woke up last night at 3 o'clock in the morning because she was scared."
Reynoso's death is one of 10 fatal shootings this year by Phoenix police, an agency that is under federal investigation for its use of deadly force. For Reynoso's family, the impact of his death is indescribable. "We're lost without him," Neal said. "I'm lost without him."
