On May 14, 2022, in Goodyear, Arizona, 19-year-old male Mohamed Salim Abdullah was at a crowded house party near Litchfield Road in a residential neighborhood just south of Van Buren Street when gunfire broke out. Around 12:56–1 a.m., Goodyear police were dispatched on reports of shots fired at a gathering in the area of Litchfield Road and Santa Cruz Drive/Western Avenue. Officers arrived to find Abdullah lying in the backyard of a home with multiple gunshot wounds. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
Witnesses and police accounts describe a chaotic scene as officers pulled up: a large crowd of partygoers ran from the house, and officers heard additional gunshots coming from several vehicles speeding away from the neighborhood. In the immediate aftermath, investigators had little public cooperation and no named suspect; Goodyear police released images of people they wanted to identify and, through Silent Witness, offered a reward of up to $2,000 for information leading to an arrest or indictment.
Reporting on the case also highlighted who Abdullah was in life. Local coverage noted that while still a student at Metro Tech High School, he once saved a teacher’s life after she collapsed, performing CPR until she began breathing again. His sister described him as brave, unhesitating when others needed help, and remembered him as a loving, positive presence in a close-knit family of several siblings. His relatives publicly pleaded for anyone with information to come forward so that his killing would not remain unsolved.
After more than a year of work interviewing witnesses, following leads and reviewing surveillance video, Goodyear police announced they had identified a primary suspect. In late June 2023, officers arrested Phoenix resident Angel Vidales-Hernandez in connection with the shooting. According to police and court records summarized in local news, witnesses told detectives there had been a dispute between Abdullah and Vidales-Hernandez at the party shortly before the gunfire, and one witness alleged that Vidales-Hernandez was the one who shot Abdullah before people fled. Vidales-Hernandez was booked into the Maricopa County jail on one count of second-degree murder and is being held on a $500,000 bond while the case proceeds through the courts.
