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On a recent afternoon at a west Tempe strip mall, the AZ Barber Academy was busy as usual. One student cut a customer’s hair, while others cleaned their stations or played on their phones, waiting for new clients to walk in.
Academy founder Hillary Alegre trains roughly a dozen students at the salon in the Tempe Village Shopping Center near the intersection of Priest Drive and Southern Avenue. Lately, though, teaching the next generation of barbers has hardly been her only concern.
Next door to Alegre’s establishment, a nondescript office is riddled with bullet holes. Until recently, it was a field office belonging to the Arizona Democratic Party. Now it’s closed, a silent symbol of the nation’s increasing political tension ahead of the looming Nov. 5 election.
Three times in the last month, someone has come by in the middle of the night and shot at the office — once with a BB gun and at least once with an actual firearm. All shootings occurred between midnight and 1 a.m. with the latest happening on Oct. 6. At least five large bullet holes dot the office’s front windows and door, spawning cracks that spread like spiderwebs. A security camera has been installed at the front door, but these days it guards only a collection of white-and-blue “Kamala” and “Arizona For Harris” campaign signs.
The office has been dormant since the first shooting on Sept. 16, Alegre said. On Friday, the Arizona Republic reported that the office was shut down for good and that campaign operations had been moved to “other, undisclosed locations.” Phoenix New Times reached out to party spokespeople but has not heard back.
The investigation into the shootings remains open, and Tempe police are still trying to track down the shooter. New Times requested police documents from the incidents but has yet to receive them. No incidents have occurred since staffers officially vacated the premises — although activity at the office has been sparse since the initial shooting — but the strip mall’s other businesses are still a bit rattled.
Alegre said she pushed her landlord to close the office. “I’m sorry, but they just got to go,” she told New Times last week. “I said to my landlord after this last time, ‘They need to go, because my boys don’t feel safe.’” Nearby, a barber-in-training spoke up.
“I’m scared to get shot,” the student said.
Whoever has been targeting the office also has placed a variety of other establishments in the crosshairs. A day care center, which has a public-facing playground, is located near Alegre’s barber academy. The shopping center also is home to a Planet Fitness, a hair and beauty supply store, a cash lender, a doctor’s office and a church, among other businesses.
Paula Lopez works as a technician at Tempe Pet Clinic. "It's scary," she said of the shootings. "We walk this area all the time." She’d only been aware of the first shooting, not the subsequent two. That political violence would rear its head here, in this nondescript shopping center, shocks her.
"You hear about these things coming from bigger cities, but for it to happen here in Tempe, that's really crazy," Lopez said. "If you heard it happened in like Washington, D.C., you're like, 'Yeah, it's Washington, D.C.' Or even, like, New York. But Tempe?”
Though the office hasn't been used since the first shooting a month ago, Kamala Harris campaign signs still adorn the walls.
Morgan Fischer
On edge
Since the first shooting, Lopez and her coworkers have taken measures to protect themselves. They walk to their cars in groups, park next to each other and carry pepper spray — measures recommended by Tempe police officers.“We usually leave around the same time, and then we always kind of keep an eye out,” she said. “It's really scary that that's what society's going to come to.”
Janice Thomas works as a shift manager for Cash 1, a direct lender located on the Eastern end of the strip mall. The shootings have left her feeling “just on edge a little bit,” she said. “We’re on guard more, checking our surroundings for sure.”
Next door at Taco Nazo, cashier Janely Juarez is less nervous about the shooting. “It doesn’t really surprise me,” she said. The taco shop is no stranger to violence, she noted. The restaurant shares a wall with Cash 1, and Juarez said there have been attempts to break into the lender by first breaking into Taco Nazo. The taqueria now has a metal roll-down security gate on the front door.
"It basically can happen anywhere," Juarez said, though she admitted the shooting at the campaign office was “kind of scary.”
At Waba Hair and Beauty Supply, some employees are still nervous, manager Brianna Key said. But after talking to police following the most recent shooting incident, she is less concerned.
"Obviously, if you hear that there's a shooting right by and this is the second time that it has happened, it is a little nerve-wracking,” Key said. “But it seems like everything is under control. The police are doing a thorough investigation on it, so hopefully they figure out who it was."
Police do seem to have been asking around — every person who spoke with New Times said investigators have stopped by to ask questions. Officers asked for security camera footage, though many workers said that would prove only so helpful; most cameras at the shopping center point inward.
However, one security camera did pick something out. On Oct. 9, Tempe police put out a social media call for information on a suspect’s car, which the department described as a white Toyota Highlander. That suggests police are getting closer to identifying the culprit. But even then, danger lurks.
The day Alegre spoke to New Times — two days after Tempe police released the bulletin about the car — she swears she saw it in a nearby parking structure.
"That car that was on that picture ... it looked like the car that was sitting out over on the edge of the car park this morning as I came past," she said. "I don't know whether it was it, but it looked like it. And I know my cars.”
