(Daily360.com) – The Post Millennial recently reported about a deadly confrontation between a 73-year-old rancher named Arizona rancher George Kelly and a Mexican national named Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, 48. The January 30 incident took a turn for the worse when Kelly shot and killed Cuen-Butimea on his ranch, roughly 1.5 miles from the border. Law enforcement officials arrested Kelly on first-degree murder charges and transported him to the nearby Santa Cruz Country Jail, where he currently awaits trial on a $1 million bond.
Prosecutors allege that Kelly was “hunting” for illegal migrants who found their way to his property at the time of the shooting. Several witnesses backed the prosecutors’ claim, saying they were part of the group that crossed with the victim. According to the Daily Mail, they claim the men in their party were indeed trying to sneak into the country but ran back to Mexico when the shooting started. Unfortunately for Cuen-Butimea, he didn’t make it.
Prosecutors claimed that an Arizona rancher charged with murdering a Mexican citizen who was trespassing on his property had deliberately "hunted" migrants with his AK-47.https://t.co/ghbFrI7CjY
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 23, 2023
Kelly’s attorney wondered why it took so long for the witnesses to come forward and suggested they only did so to receive “immigration benefits.” The lawyer claimed drug traffickers pay migrants to testify to secure their “smuggling route” into America.
Kelly’s legal team claims said there isn’t any forensic evidence proving Kelly even shot the man. Instead, they allege the group of migrants was carrying AK-47s when they trespassed onto their client’s ranch, and Kelly simply fired warning shots “over” their heads. The attorneys also claim the state didn’t vet the witnesses to prove their accounts were reliable, and now Kelly is unjustly labeled as a violent racist.
Prosecutors dispute those claims, stating that the migrants were unarmed and Kelly was the aggressor. According to them, the rancher targeted the migrants with his AK-47.
In a curious twist, the Post Millennial reported that Kelly was a writer and a rancher who wrote a story about people who patrol their “ranch daily,” armed with that same type of weapon.
Copyright 2023, Daily360.com
