Jose Estrada, a 33-year-old male of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity from Tucson, Arizona, was shot and killed late on the morning of December 21, 2019, in a sparsely developed area south of Tucson International Airport. Deputies from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department were dispatched around 11:40 a.m. to a report of a shooting in the 5800 block of East Blackbrush Road, an area in unincorporated Pima County just outside the city.
When they arrived, they found Estrada suffering from a gunshot wound, and despite their response he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Detectives remained on scene to process evidence and interview witnesses, and their investigation quickly focused on a woman identified by authorities as Elsa Madonia. Within roughly a day of the shooting, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and multiple local outlets reported that Madonia, also 33, had been identified as the suspect in Estrada’s death. She was arrested, booked into jail, and held in custody on suspicion of second-degree murder, with sheriff’s officials and news reports emphasizing that the investigation was ongoing and that anyone with additional information was urged to contact 911 or submit anonymous tips through the regional 88-CRIME program.
Subsequent summaries of the case in a crime-tracking database state that deputies discovered Estrada with a fatal gunshot wound at the East Blackbrush Road location and that he was pronounced dead at the scene, reiterating that Madonia was identified as the suspect and arrested and that the case is classified there as “solved,” reflecting law-enforcement’s identification and charging of a suspect. Publicly accessible news accounts, however, largely stop with the announcement of her arrest and booking on the second-degree murder charge, and they do not detail the later course of the prosecution, leaving the ultimate courtroom outcome and any sentence unclear in open sources.
Estrada’s full name appears in an obituary as Jose Armando Estrada Jr., listing his birth on September 22, 1986, and his death on December 21, 2019, with funeral arrangements handled by Funeraria del Angel South Lawn & South Lawn Cemetery in Tucson. Visitation and a reception were scheduled for early January 2020 at the funeral home on South Park Avenue, giving family and friends a formal setting to gather and mourn. In the years since, an online memorial page dedicated to him has recorded more than sixty virtual candles lit in his memory, with relatives and loved ones leaving messages that describe him as fun, loving, caring, and funny, and speak of him as a devoted father whose absence has left them struggling to adjust and looking forward to seeing him again someday.
