Redacted report offers new details on Phoenix cop’s wrong-man shooting

It started innocently enough, with a desperate sister looking for a mentally unwell brother who was off his medication. It ended with tragedy: a police officer shooting and killing the wrong man.

The accidental killing of 36-year-old Christian Diaz Rendon by Phoenix police officer Jason Valenzuela led to outrage at the time. Valenzuela has faced no known consequences for shooting and killing Rendon as he subdued a home intruder. Now, though, a 922-page incident report compiled by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, whose Major Incidents Division investigated the shooting and what led up to it, reveals new details about what happened the night of Jan. 26. 

Phoenix New Times obtained the DPS investigation via a public records request. Nearly half of the report is redacted — including a stretch of 363 completely redacted pages in a row. DPS did not respond to questions about what was redacted and why.

The portion of the report focusing on the shooting largely reinforces Phoenix police’s narrative of what happened. When Valenzuela showed up at Rendon’s home in the South Phoenix neighborhood of Estrella Village, 911 operators were fielding multiple calls about a man shooting up the house. Valenzuela was one of the first officers on the scene.

When he arrived, he saw through the open front door that Rendon was punching 33-year-old Edgar Ledezma Garcia, who had been shooting up the house, and had Garcia in a chokehold. Valenzuela yelled, “Show your fucking hands!” Less than a second after shouting the command, the officer pulled his rifle trigger, shooting and killing Rendon, the wrong man.

Garcia’s family members immediately reacted in horror, and in the minutes after the shooting, Valenzuela told a fellow officer that he thought Rendon “was fucking stabbing him.” An investigator on the scene later described Valenzuela in his report as “emotionally distraught” and noted that a crisis counselor had been called for him. Valenzuela was unable to be interviewed that night. 

Phoenix Police Chief Matt Giordano did not formally acknowledge that his officer had killed the wrong man until nearly two weeks later. DPS investigated the shooting and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Valenzuela, sparking outrage from Rendon’s family and members of the community. Garcia, meanwhile, is facing felony murder charges in Maricopa County Superior Court for Rendon’s killing, a type of murder charge that allows the county to prosecute Garcia despite not having fired the shot that killed Rendon.

Garcia’s attorney, Robert Abernathey of the Maricopa County Legal Defender’s Office, could not be reached for this story.  

New Times has requested the results of use-of-force and Professional Standards Bureau investigations into the shooting but has not yet received them.

Off his meds

The half of the DPS report that isn’t redacted includes summaries of interviews with Valenzuela and other officers on the scene, and neighbors and family members who called 911 from inside the home. It has lists of evidence collected at the scene and diagrams of the 55 shots fired in and around the house. It also includes notes from interviews with Garcia’s sister, Jenny, who arrived at the scene with her father 45 minutes after the chaos began. 

Around 6:18 p.m. on the evening of Jan. 26, Edgar Garcia arrived in his pickup truck with multiple guns at Rendon’s family home in Estrella Village. Garcia’s father was Rendon’s landlord and his family previously lived in the house. Garcia exited his truck, which was blasting music, and began firing rounds into the house. Garcia was searching for “Alex,” who did not exist and who he kept saying was “plotting to kill him.”

Neighbors immediately started calling 911. Garcia then entered the house and continued firing, shooting one of Rendon’s children in the foot. While his family hid and called 911 themselves, Rendon tackled and disarmed Garcia. Valenzuela shot and killed Rendon not long afterward.

Initial reports said that Garcia had a history of mental illness and thought someone in the house had a hit out on him. The newly released investigation gives more details into what happened in the lead-up to the tragic events that day. Garcia had been acting erratically and had gone off his medications. And while the tragedy played out, his family had been trying to find him to get him help.

In her interview with a DPS investigator, Jenny Garcia explained that her brother had been stable for about a year but recently went off his antipsychotic medications. The morning of the shooting, she’d called his psychiatrist at Terros Health for help.

“She explained to the psychiatrist that Edgar had not slept in a couple of days, was behaving erratically, and was acting aggressively verbally toward her dad,” the report read.  

The psychiatrist told her that it was important she get him to take his medications immediately and sent over a new prescription for her to fill. She filled it and tried to find him using an app that tracked his location.

“But as soon as she reached where he was, Mr. Garcia would already be on his way to somewhere else,” the report read. 

Eventually, Jenny Garcia went to see her father. They checked the app together and saw that Garcia was at a property they recognized — a home they used to live in and that her father now rented out. When he didn’t move from that location for 30 minutes, they decided to go find him. They brought the medication with them.

They arrived around 7 p.m. — about 45 minutes after Edgar first showed up. When they saw police officers, they knew something was wrong. 

Jenny Garcia could not be reached for this story. 

‘No one is going to disarm me’

Garcia was taken to the hospital because of the injuries he sustained from Rendon. The following day, DPS tried to hand him over to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to jail him, but the sheriff’s office refused to take custody because Garcia was still in an “altered mental state.” The sheriff’s office didn’t accept custody until two days later. 

A drug test found six substances in Garcia’s system: oxycodone, haloperidol, ketamine, methocarbamol, norketamine and quetiapine. Oxycodone and methocarbamol are painkillers, while haloperidol and quetiapine are antipsychotics. Ketamine is often used for depression and pain. Norketamine is its metabolite, the substance ketamine breaks down into as it’s processed by the body. 

Edgar Garcia’s diagnosis and prescribed medications were redacted in the report, so it is unclear what he was prescribed. His sister told the investigators that he was tested regularly for drugs by his doctors “but had never tested positive for illegal drugs.”

It is unclear how long Edgar had been off his medication. Patients who stop taking their antipsychotics can show symptoms of psychosis within a couple of days. 

The day before the shooting, a Sunday, his mother confronted him, saying he “was not doing okay,” per the DPS report. Edgar agreed “and was trying to calm down.” His mother tried to contact his psychiatrist but had no luck. 

By the next day — the day of the incident — the window in which Garcia could be reasoned with had closed, Jenny Garcia told the investigators. “Edgar would not recognize that he needed help,” the report read. 

Edgar showed up at Rendon’s home with a loaded air pistol and three loaded firearms: a 12-gauge shotgun and two handguns. Arizona law does not prohibit someone on antipsychotics from possessing guns, though someone found by a court to be “mentally defective” can be barred from gun ownership. The family knew he had guns, his sister told investigators. Earlier — the report did not specify when — her father had told him not to take them with him and to put them away. Edgar didn’t listen. 

“No one is going to disarm me,” Jenny recounted him responding.