William “Bill” Bell, a 56-year-old male whose race and ethnicity have not been publicly reported, was gravely wounded during a home invasion at his residence in the 1000 block of West Prince Road in Tucson, Arizona, on August 9, 2016. Shortly before 1 p.m., Tucson police officers responded to reports of a shooting at the address and found Bell inside the home with obvious signs of gunshot trauma.
He was transported by paramedics to Banner – University Medical Center with injuries initially described as serious but not life-threatening.
According to police and subsequent news reports, Bell had been inside the residence with two other adults and two children when an unknown intruder entered the home. The intruder, described as armed with a handgun, demanded money after coming inside. Investigators later determined that the suspect was a Hispanic man, estimated to be between 30 and 40 years old, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and approximately 135 pounds, with a dark complexion and light hair. Witnesses stated that he was wearing a black shirt, jeans and black boots. During the confrontation, Bell walked toward a bedroom in the residence; at that point, the intruder followed and shot him multiple times, while the other occupants—both adults and the two children—were not physically injured.
Detectives from the Tucson Police Department’s Home Invasion Unit processed the scene and noted evidence of narcotics sales inside the home. Based on those observations, police publicly stated that the crime did not appear to be a random act but instead a targeted incident connected in some way to drug activity at the residence. This characterization is echoed in case summaries that list the incident as a home invasion in which a resident was shot and killed, with drug involvement flagged as a contributing factor. The shooting was initially investigated as a non-fatal home-invasion assault, but about a month later, on September 13, detectives were notified that Bell had succumbed to his injuries in the hospital. The case was then reclassified as a homicide, and news outlets reported that the man wounded during the August 9 home invasion had died of his injuries.
Following Bell’s death, investigators renewed public appeals for information. Police reported that the gunman fled the residence immediately after the shooting, getting into the passenger side of a dark-colored truck or sport-utility vehicle that then left the area in an unknown direction. At the time of the main media releases in mid-September 2016, Tucson police emphasized that there were no suspects in custody and asked anyone with information to contact the 88-CRIME tip line. Later case-tracking and victim-advocacy sites that continue to list Bell’s homicide, and which were still seeking updates as of late 2025, do not record any subsequent arrest or publicly identified suspect tied specifically to this killing, suggesting that the assailant described in the original reports has not been formally apprehended or charged in connection with Bell’s death.
