Michael D. Valenzuela was shot and killed on the night of April 19, 2022, after Tucson police were called to a reported shooting near Oaktree Park on the city’s southwest side, in the 1600 block of West Colonial Heights, where they found a black car stopped in the roadway with him inside suffering from obvious gunshot wounds. Tucson Fire Department personnel pronounced him dead at the scene, and investigators quickly treated the area around the vehicle as a homicide scene while notifying his
family and beginning a canvass of the neighborhood for witnesses or surveillance footage. The victim was identified publicly as Michael D. Valenzuela, an 18-year-old male of Hispanic / Latino ethnicity from Tucson, Arizona.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, detectives with the Tucson Police Department documented the scene around the car and interviewed a second man who was located there but was not physically injured. Reports describe this second individual as a “male victim” who did not suffer gunshot wounds, suggesting that officers viewed him primarily as a potential witness rather than someone targeted by the shooter. Publicly available accounts do not indicate that a firearm was recovered at the scene, nor do they describe any immediate leads about the direction in which the shooter fled or whether the attack was believed to be targeted or random. Instead, early news coverage simply notes that the investigation was active and that authorities were seeking information from the community, urging anyone with details to contact 911 or the anonymous tip line 88-CRIME.
Outside of the crime scene itself, online memorial and obituary records provide a picture of Michael’s life and the impact of his death. An obituary lists his full name and birth date as January 28, 2004, confirming that he was from Tucson and noting that he was mourned by close family, including a surviving parent, siblings, extended relatives, and many friends who were left to grieve his sudden loss. Services for him were held at St. Augustine’s Cathedral in downtown Tucson, followed by burial at Holy Hope Cemetery, reflecting that his family organized a traditional funeral and burial within days of the shooting. A national gun-violence memorial site also lists his name and date of death, and shows that many candles have been lit in his honor, indicating ongoing remembrance from people who knew him and from the wider community affected by the killing.
As of the most recent online updates, there is no public record of any named suspect being arrested or charged in connection with Michael’s death. The initial report from local media explicitly stated that no suspects had been identified at that time, and subsequent case summaries and memorial entries that compile information from news outlets and public sources continue to describe the case as an unsolved shooting near Oaktree Park rather than referencing an arrest, indictment, or trial. In other words, based on available online information through late 2025, law enforcement has not publicly announced any suspect or suspects, and Michael’s killing remains an open homicide investigation in Tucson.
