On July 3, 2018, just after 4:20 a.m., Phoenix police were called to a residence near 19th Avenue and Mountain View Road, where they found Phoenix resident Robert F. Candelaria, 38, male, with no specific ethnicity reported in the public records I found, mortally wounded by gunfire; he died at the scene despite emergency response efforts. Reports describe the location as an apartment or home within a complex in that neighborhood, and investigators later stated that he had been shot twice.
A national database that compiles shooting incidents classifies the case as a fatal shooting with a domestic-violence component, though publicly available summaries do not spell out the exact nature of any personal relationships involved, and one case synopsis notes that the precise circumstances of the confrontation remain unclear from the record.
Within a few days, detectives identified 25-year-old Anthony Guillermo Ramirez as the primary suspect. According to a bulletin from KNXV/ABC15, investigators believe Ramirez was at the residence when an argument or conflict escalated and that he allegedly shot Candelaria twice before turning the weapon toward another man present and attempting, unsuccessfully, to shoot him as well. Police said they had developed probable cause to arrest Ramirez on a homicide charge but that he fled the scene before officers arrived. In their public appeal, they described him as a Hispanic male about 5 feet 7 inches tall and 135 pounds and asked anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact Phoenix police or Silent Witness, which offered a reward of up to $1,000 for tips leading to his capture. Gun Violence Archive’s incident record for the shooting lists Candelaria as the victim and Ramirez as the subject–suspect in the same case.
Arrest records compiled from Maricopa County public data show that on July 7, 2018—four days after the killing—a man named Anthony Guillermo Ramirez, born January 20, 1993, was booked in Maricopa County under booking number T472573. Those records list three charges: one count of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated assault, and one count of driving with a suspended, revoked, or canceled license. The physical description in those booking records closely matches the description Phoenix police released for the suspect in Candelaria’s shooting, and the booking date aligns with the time frame in which detectives said they were seeking Ramirez for homicide. Mugshot databases that reproduce the same booking record emphasize that these charges are accusations and that the defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court; open-source records readily accessible online do not clearly document the final outcome of the case, leaving it unclear whether there was a trial, a plea agreement, or another resolution to the murder charge stemming from Candelaria’s death.
After the shooting, friends, relatives, and community members turned to online memorial and case-tracking sites to remember Candelaria and keep attention on the investigation. GunMemorial.org lists him as having been lost to gun violence in Phoenix on July 3, 2018, and has hosted dozens of virtual candles and tributes in his memory. Contributors there and on CrimeSolversCentral describe him as a warm, approachable person whose death sent painful ripples through his close-knit circle. Details added to his memorial page mention that he attended Sunnyslope High School and recall a personality that friends characterized as tough on the outside but big-hearted, someone associated with laughter and shared pastimes like fishing. Together, these public tributes and crime records portray a killing that law enforcement treated as a serious, targeted act of violence, with a named suspect arrested and charged, and a family and community left to grieve a life cut short.
