On February 2, 2009, William Baker, a 31-year-old male from Phoenix, Arizona, was found shot inside his girlfriend’s home and later pronounced dead at the hospital. Public memorial and case-index sites agree on the basic timeline: he was discovered with a gunshot injury in a residence in Phoenix, and efforts at emergency care were not enough to save his life.
His race is not specified in the publicly available records or memorials that document the case, and none of the sources that compile domestic-violence fatalities or gun-violence victims provide further demographic details beyond his name, age, location, and gender.
According to a domestic-violence fatality remembrance project that relies on material from the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the shooting occurred inside the home of Baker’s girlfriend, identified as Carrie Lazona McLauren. In that account, the weapon used in the killing was recovered inside the residence, and McLauren was arrested on suspicion of homicide in connection with Baker’s death. The same source categorizes the incident as an intimate-partner-violence homicide involving a gun, emphasizing that William’s killing is viewed within the context of domestic violence, and lists him among victims of “homicide by girlfriend,” with labels referencing “DV Domestic Violence Homicide,” “Gun Involved Homicide,” and “Intimate Partner Violence.”
Later case compilations that attempt to track unresolved or poorly documented violent deaths describe the circumstances of Baker’s killing as opaque from an official-records standpoint. One such site notes that an obituary in *The Arizona Republic* confirmed his death but did not describe how he was killed or provide narrative details of the incident. It further reports that searches in Arizona’s publicly accessible online court database did not clearly reveal any criminal case or docket information that can be definitively tied to his death, suggesting that if charges were filed, they are not easily traceable in the open digital record, or that formal prosecution outcomes remain unclear.
Taken together, the available online information establishes that William Baker was fatally shot on February 2, 2009, in Phoenix, that his girlfriend, Carrie Lazona McLauren, was arrested at the time on suspicion of homicide, and that the incident has been framed by advocacy and remembrance groups as a domestic-violence–related shooting. However, the same sources also underscore how little is publicly documented about what happened afterward: they do not provide clear confirmation of formal charges, trial proceedings, convictions, or acquittals, nor do they identify any additional suspects beyond the girlfriend initially taken into custody. In the absence of accessible court records or detailed law-enforcement statements, the ultimate legal resolution of the case, including whether McLauren or any other individual was ever prosecuted or held criminally responsible for Baker’s death, remains undocumented in the online sources that can currently be consulted.
