On the evening of January 24, 2020, Jose Ayala, a 51-year-old male Hispanic / Latino from Glendale, Arizona, was in a parking lot near 59th–63rd Avenue and Glendale Avenue with his 19-year-old son, Luis, when they were confronted by a man Jose knew well from his professional life. Police later said the individual who approached them was 58-year-old Robert Mahoney, described as one of Ayala’s former business partners.
In that parking lot encounter, Mahoney opened fire on both Ayala and his son, critically wounding Ayala and injuring Luis before turning the gun on himself. Responding officers and medical personnel arrived to find three adult males shot; Ayala was pronounced dead at the scene while his son was transported to the hospital with injuries that authorities described as non–life-threatening.
In the aftermath of the shooting, investigators worked to piece together the relationships and circumstances behind the attack. Publicly available information indicates that Ayala and Mahoney had previously been in business together, and that the confrontation in the parking lot stemmed from that prior association, though police did not immediately disclose a specific motive beyond confirming the former business-partner relationship. The same night, Glendale officers also responded to an entirely separate shooting a few miles away near 47th Avenue and Maryland Avenue, where two other men were shot; detectives emphasized that the two incidents were unrelated, underscoring that Ayala’s killing was a targeted encounter tied to his history with Mahoney rather than a random act of violence.
Mahoney survived the initial self-inflicted gunshot long enough to be transported to a hospital, but he later died from his wounds. Authorities stated that two people had died as a result of the parking-lot shooting—Ayala and Mahoney—while Luis remained hospitalized but was expected to recover. Glendale police announced that there were no outstanding suspects in the case, and later case summaries list the matter as “solved” with the primary suspect deceased, indicating that no arrests were made because the identified shooter died from his self-inflicted injury.
Friends, family, and community members later memorialized Ayala online, where he is remembered under the nickname “Pepe” as a devoted father and a hardworking pool plumber employed with Anasazi Pools. Digital tributes describe how deeply he is missed and note that candles and comments continue to be added in his memory, reflecting ongoing grief in the Glendale community over a life cut short in what police characterized as a business-related confrontation that escalated into a murder-suicide.
