Carol Ann Arthur, a 79-year-old female of unspecified race or ethnicity, lived in Glendale, Arizona and died there on October 29, 2017 in a death that online records describe as a “death by force” resulting from gun violence. Public records and memorials note that she was born on December 7, 1937 in Denver, Colorado, and that at the time of her death she was associated with the Glendale community, where her funeral and burial arrangements were centered.
Her obituary describes a long, family-oriented life. She was the daughter of Jack W. Ford and Gracie Marie Ford and moved from Denver to Arizona, graduating from West High School in Phoenix in 1955. That same year she married William D. “Billy” Arthur, with whom she shared more than four decades of marriage until his death in 1999. Over the years she worked for Mountain Bell in the mid-1950s, then chose to stay home as a homemaker for many years before returning to the workforce as a supply room supervisor at the Arizona State Senate, where she remained for about 30 years, from 1973 to 2003. She was active in the women’s organization Beta Sigma Phi for several decades and was remembered for enjoying card games such as Pinochle, Arthur Rummy and poker, for her love of shopping, and for donating her time through volunteer work. Her obituary emphasizes that her family was the most important part of her life, listing multiple children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren among her survivors.
After her death, arrangements were made through West Resthaven Funeral Home and Resthaven Park Cemetery in Glendale. Notices indicate that she was buried at Resthaven Park Cemetery and that a graveside service was held there, with friends and family invited to attend. Cemetery records and memorial pages confirm her interment at West Resthaven Park Cemetery in Glendale, Arizona, tying her final resting place to the same community where she spent much of her adult life.
Separate from the obituary, multiple violence-tracking and case-tracking websites classify her death as the result of gun violence. A national gun-violence memorial site lists her by name, age, and date of death and states that she was “lost to gun violence” in Glendale, Arizona, and links back to her obituary and to the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner’s case-status portal as underlying sources. A crime-case aggregation site similarly records her under a homicide-style entry labeled “Death by Force,” noting her birth date, date of death, city and state, and explicitly stating that her death was the result of gun violence. That site presents her case within a broader project focused on missing persons, unsolved homicides, and other violent or suspicious deaths in Arizona.
However, none of the publicly accessible online materials provide narrative detail about the shooting itself—such as where in Glendale the incident occurred, the precise circumstances leading up to it, or whether it happened in a home, public place, or other setting. The obituary offers no information suggesting criminal circumstances, while the specialized case-tracking and memorial sites refer only generally to gun violence and “death by force” without describing an incident report, police summary, or news article about what happened.
Across the obituary, cemetery listing, gun-violence memorial page, and crime-case database entries reviewed, there is no mention of any suspect, person of interest, or arrest in connection with Carol Ann Arthur’s death. The crime-tracking site explicitly invites the public to provide updates if they know more, which suggests that, as far as that project’s curators are aware, no publicly documented resolution or identified offender has been recorded for this case. As of the most recent updates on these sites, any investigative findings by law enforcement regarding who was responsible for the gunfire that caused her death are not reflected in the online sources currently available.
