In the small border town of Bisbee, Arizona, the life of 51-year-old Carlos Saavedra Ramirez came to a tragic end on the morning of April 22, 2015. Ramirez, a man known to be experiencing homelessness and struggling with mental health issues, was fatally shot by a Bisbee police officer in a dirt lot behind a local Safeway supermarket, a place he had called home for several years within a tent on private property with the owner's permission. The events leading to the fatal encounter began with a complaint from a woman who alleged that Ramirez had been banging on her car windows in the grocery store's parking lot.
Bisbee Police Sergeant Robert Coronado, a 17-year veteran of the force, was the officer who responded to the call. According to the official account provided by law enforcement, when Coronado approached Ramirez to arrest him, Ramirez appeared to be hiding something. The officer stated that he saw a knife in Ramirez's hand and that Ramirez raised it towards him. Sgt. Coronado reported that he knocked Ramirez's hand down, took a step back, and then fired a single shot to the chest. An autopsy would later confirm that a single gunshot wound to the chest was the cause of death. A knife was reportedly recovered at the scene.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the Cochise County Sheriff's Department and the Sierra Vista Police Department conducted an investigation into the incident. On May 29, 2015, the Cochise County Attorney's Office concluded that Sgt. Coronado's use of deadly force was legally justified. Toxicology reports indicated the presence of methamphetamine and alcohol in Ramirez's system at the time of his death. Following the investigation, Sgt. Coronado, who had been placed on administrative leave, returned to his duties. No arrests were made in connection with the death of Carlos Saavedra Ramirez.
The official ruling, however, did not close the chapter on this incident. In March 2016, the family of Carlos Saavedra Ramirez, including his mother and daughter, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sgt. Robert Coronado and the City of Bisbee. The lawsuit claimed that the use of deadly force was unnecessary, particularly given that law enforcement was aware of Ramirez's long-standing history of mental illness and his numerous previous interactions with the police. The family contended that the situation could have been handled differently, sparing his life.
