On a May evening in 2020, a long-simmering dispute over property reached a fatal conclusion on a dirt road in Buckeye, Arizona. Richard Mladick, a 51-year-old White male, was shot and killed near the intersection of Miller and Lower River roads. The man who pulled the trigger was his neighbor, Javan Berry, with whom Mladick had been engaged in an ongoing conflict regarding land ownership.
The fatal encounter unfolded after Berry called the Buckeye Police Department to report a
trespasser. According to Berry's account to authorities, Mladick had blocked the roadway with his truck, yelled racial slurs, and threatened him and his uncle, who was also present. Berry claimed that he believed Mladick was returning to his vehicle to retrieve a gun. In what he stated was an act of self-defense and an attempt to wound, not kill, Berry retrieved his own firearm and fired at Mladick's legs. However, the gunshots proved to be fatal, and Richard Mladick was pronounced dead at the scene from apparent gunshot wounds.
When law enforcement arrived, they found a tense situation with Berry and his uncle refusing to exit their truck. The Buckeye Police Department's SWAT team was called in and utilized an armored vehicle to approach the two men, taking them into custody without further incident. Javan Berry was subsequently arrested and jailed in Phoenix on suspicion of second-degree murder. Later, in 2021, Berry was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10.5 years in prison. The tragic shooting was the culmination of a history of heated confrontations between the two men over a piece of property where Mladick was developing a recreational lake and Berry was the lone holdout who was unwilling to sell the land his family had owned for decades.
