Maricopa Police Department released a 196-page report to InMaricopa Friday detailing the murder of Esteban Valenzuela, 16, in the Maricopa Meadows late last year.
The expansive report contributed by 30 different law enforcement officials reveals many previously unknown facts about the case, some shocking or disturbing. It gives us a new look at what responding officers saw when they first got to the scene, the lies and truths detectives fielded in interview rooms, orgulous private messages between suspects in the minutes and days after the murder and their sordid, panicky internet search histories.
Parsing together the events of Nov. 22, 2024, has not been easy. For all its leaves, the new document is riddled with redactions — names and identifying characteristics of the child victim and the four arrested suspects that had been his peers. Only two have ever been named in connection to the shooting death: Isaiah Bandin, 15, and Eliot Jackson, 17.
MPD has never named any suspect or victim. InMaricopa has been able to identify Valenzuela, Bandin and Jackson through court and coroner records. Curiously, the new report identifies child victims and witnesses to the homicide by their full names.
A 16-year-old dealer known as “Chronic,” real name Sergio Michael Munoz, and his friend Robert “Carlos” Vasquez, whose age was not disclosed, were labelled by police as “victims” because they were the targets of what started as a drug-related robbery.
Here are seven facts about the Meadows Murder we unearthed in the heavily redacted report.
1. Cops treated the shot teen for a nonexistent overdose
MPD Officer Nathan Peterson arrived at the scene four minutes after the first 911 call came through. A neighbor waved him down and pointed to Valenzuela’s lifeless body lying in the street.
“I laid the male subject on his back and observed what appeared to be pink and white fluid coming from his nose, which appeared to be a possible overdose,” Peterson wrote in his report. “Due to what I observed to be a possible overdose and no immediate sign of trauma to the body, I began to administer Narcan on the subject through his nostril.”
Other officers arrived on scene and began CPR until medics arrived to treat Valenzuela. Only then did Petersen see blood coming from the back of the teen’s shoulder.
2. Off-duty deputy stumbled upon suspect kid 11 minutes after murder
MPD Cpl. Joshua Fox was racing to the scene of the murder when he reported an off-duty Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy who lived in the Maricopa Meadows had already contacted a person of interest.
The off-duty deputy saw a teenaged girl wearing a black spaghetti-strap shirt and checkered pajama pants running in the area.
The girl, an Ak-Chin tribal member, told officers she was going for an hourlong walk during a visit to her cousin’s house in Senita. She said she believed she was being followed and that she was going to be kidnapped.
A vivisection by InMaricopa of court records, police documents and social media accounts has virtually confirmed the girl was Bandin’s 15-year-old girlfriend.
The girlfriend follows a woman on various social media platforms who is identified in police reports as the suspect’s mother. She posted #estebanswrld in her Instagram bio and exchanges bio tags with Bandin’s account, @mrbandibandi. She is Bandin’s only Facebook friend.
Video footage showed the girl, clad in her checkered pajama pants, running through the Maricopa Meadows with two boys after Valenzuela had been shot. Police later determined the girl’s kidnapping claims were false and noted her statements “were inconsistent” and that she “appeared to be withholding information.”
During an interview at the Maricopa police station, she reportedly “appeared to smirk and even appeared to smile at one point,” the report noted.
She was likely released before being arrested Nov. 27 when police conducted an operation that involved a high-risk traffic stop at Sonoran Creek Marketplace and a search warrant execution in The Villages at Rancho El Dorado. After that mission, officers reported jailing Bandin and a 15-year-old girl.
Both children were transported to the Pinal County Juvenile Detention Facility in the same police unit, wherein new audio transcripts show they found comfort in pet names while they discussed their fates and defense strategies.
“Literally getting a homicide charge for something I didn’t do,” says one. Responds the other: “Just tell them everything that you knew. Not everything, everything.”
“I love you, monkey,” they both say.
3. ‘Hitting a lick’
InMaricopa reported in December that the murder was committed during a drug deal gone wrong. Just exactly how wrong it went was unknown until now.
Two children, whose names were redacted by police, messaged each other Nov. 16 about “hitting a lick” on one of Maricopa’s local drug dealers, according to Instagram messages obtained through multiple search warrants.
The children and several other people who were never identified concluded in the messages Nov. 18 that Munoz “would make a good target,” the report stated.
Munoz as “Chronic” posted a photo to his Instagram story Nov. 21 advertising several boxes of vape products for sale. The unnamed juveniles set up a “bulk purchase” at Dancer Lane, and the last message Munoz sent before the gunfire started was “here.”
Valdez sat in the passenger seat of Munoz’s Cadillac during the rendezvous, which Munoz recalled as three people approaching his car with guns. He said two males got in the car, and the other person stayed outside.
“Munoz said the males began yelling at him (Munoz) and Vasquez to ‘give me your shit’,” the report stated. “While yelling, Munoz said he was repeatedly beaten on the sides and back of his head by both [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] who were both in possession of a gun.”
Munoz said he was yelling for them to stop when he heard a pop, which he at first thought was an airsoft or pellet gun. He said that’s when the robbers “immediately exited his vehicle and he drove away,” according to police officers who added he reported his black backpack full of vape product was stolen.
Munoz learned of Valenzuela’s death the next day, according to the report.
An unnamed Santa Rosa Springs boy, identified as the best friend of one of the children involved in the robbery, told the authorities he witnessed the murder. In his interview with MPD Det. Kevin McCullar, he described a tall, masked white boy, a short Hispanic male — likely Bandin — and the girl believed to be Bandin’s girlfriend.
That witness said he saw the Hispanic boy “pistol-whip” Munoz.
“And then when it happened, I heard the shot. [Valenzuela] ran out the car screaming in pain. And then I just kept on running ’cause I got scared ’cause I thought it was gonna be a shootout,” the boy said.
No shell casing was located inside the vehicle. However, because it was noted that the robber standing outside the car window was using the gun to strike Sergio in the head, it is possible a malfunction happened after the fatal round was fired and the casing was never fully ejected.
4. Bapchule child admitted to the fatal shooting
Detectives discovered that one of the child suspects, a boy whose name and age have not been released, lived in his aunt’s house in Bapchule and went to a high school in Chandler.
When Dets. McCullar and Trina Clement picked him up from his school, the suspect requested a lawyer before he was transported to the Pinal County juvie. After five hours in custody, the child asked to speak with detectives with his aunt present in lieu of a lawyer.
He “admitted to pointing a gun at the driver (Sergio “Chronic” Munoz) while attempting to take items from the car” in the interview, stated the new MPD report. “A struggle ensued, and a gunshot was fired.” The gunfire burned Munoz’s ear, which has become permanently deformed.
The Bapchule boy said he disposed of his gun in a trash bin at his aunt’s house and handed off the stolen bag of vape cartridges to another child at some point after the robbers fled the scene.
During a search of his Ruins Road home on the Gila River Indian Community, detectives found an empty Smith & Wesson .22 caliber magazine and two .40 caliber cartridges.
5. The robbers stole gun while ‘carhopping’
In text messages obtained in search warrants, the two children who plotted together to rob Munoz also reportedly mentioned “finding” a Glock handgun with three magazines during one of their nightly “hops” in Maricopa and Chandler.
Carhopping is a crime of opportunity in which people roam residential areas at night, check car doors and steal any items of value from unsecured vehicles.
Those children “expressed the importance” of “deciding on who to ‘hit’ soon because they would have ‘3 poles’,” which is slang for a firearm, said the authorities.
Documents did not specify whether or not a stolen gun was used in the murder.
Cpl. Fox, one of the first officers who responded to the November murder scene, was shot in a carhopping incident involving teenagers in June 2023. That incident led to the death of a 17-year-old and injuries to Fox.
6. Drug dealer frantically searched InMaricopa.com
Cell phone records obtained by police in a search warrant show Munoz searched for news articles about the murder the day after it happened.
Munoz made 17 search queries related to a teenager dying in Maricopa in a two-minute span Nov. 23. On InMaricopa.com, he sought and ultimately clicked on our story breaking the news that Valenzuela died, then revisited it a second time.
Dominique Zepeda, the woman Munoz visited to get cleaned up after being bloodied, reportedly sent him the link to one another InMaricopa.com story about the murder. The article became a talking point when officers interviewed her, according to police reports.
Zepeda admitted to sending Munoz the article and going to a carwash with him after the shooting, but insisted Munoz didn’t tell her that he had witnessed a murder.
7. Teen robbers mocked the murder victim
In a sickeningly stonyhearted text message exchange obtained by police, an unnamed teen laughed about the murder and mocked the victim.
Someone asks, “What thug did y’all pop now?” (“Pop” is used in place of “kill.”)
One of the suspects responded with laughing crying emojis, finding the child’s murder comical. The teen hints at committing more violence, possibly another murder: “What’s [REDACTED] plan now that his big homie gone? No more hiding.”
When asked “Wtf even happy,” likely slang for “what happened,” the teen hinted through barely intelligible English that the murder was the unplanned result of escalation.
Using a misspelled racial slur and a lyric from Lil Durk’s “Only the Family,” the teen said: “His big homie died … he would still be alive rn (right now) if u nikkas ain gas em up.”
