On February 20, 2017, 37-year-old Saul Saucedo Zavala, a Hispanic/Latino male from Tucson, Arizona, was shot and killed in an area just south of the city limits in the jurisdiction of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Around midday, deputies were dispatched after a report of gunfire in the 10400 block of South Epperson Lane. When they arrived, they found Saucedo Zavala suffering from gunshot wounds.
First responders immediately attempted lifesaving measures and Rural Metro Fire personnel took over medical care, but he was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, investigators began canvassing the area and gathering witness information. Early reports from authorities indicated they were searching for a man in his 30s who had been seen leaving the area in a small gray pickup truck, described as wearing a gray baseball cap and gray T-shirt. The location—on a rural stretch of South Epperson Lane—meant that detectives were working with a relatively small pool of potential witnesses and any vehicle descriptions or neighborhood tips took on outsized importance as they tried to reconstruct how the encounter unfolded and why it escalated into lethal violence.
Within roughly two and a half hours of the killing on Epperson Lane, Tucson authorities were called to a second, separate homicide in the city—this one in the 5200 block of South Fletcher, where 35-year-old Eulises Echevarria was found dead. The close timing and geographic proximity of the two incidents led investigators to quickly explore whether they might be linked. As the investigation progressed, law enforcement identified a suspect believed to be involved in both cases. Local news reports later confirmed that 30-year-old Roque Gutierrez was taken into custody in connection with the homicides that occurred that day.
Authorities stated that Gutierrez was arrested for the murder of Saucedo Zavala in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction, with the killing on South Epperson Lane specifically cited in coverage of the arrest. He was also linked to the later homicide on South Fletcher, and reports from the time noted that he was being held on a $1,000,000 cash bond while the legal case moved forward. Subsequent case-tracking summaries that compile information from official and media sources list Saucedo Zavala’s homicide as solved and indicate that Gutierrez was arrested and charged in connection with the killing, although publicly available records do not detail the final outcome of any prosecution.
Online memorials and community discussion boards reflect the lingering impact of Saucedo Zavala’s death on friends, family, and residents of Tucson. A national gun-violence memorial site includes his name among those lost to firearms on February 20, 2017, and shows multiple virtual candles lit in his memory. On a separate case-discussion forum dedicated to homicides in Arizona, posters have expressed sympathy for the families of both Saucedo Zavala and Echevarria and have commented on how quickly events appeared to spiral on the day of the shootings, underscoring the sense of shock and the desire for lasting accountability in the wake of the crimes. 4search1
