On the evening of November 22, 2015, German Del Bosque III, a 24-year-old male of officially recorded unknown race/ethnicity from Phoenix, Arizona, was walking with his fiancée toward a nearby Chinese restaurant in the area around 7th Street and Buckeye Road in south Phoenix. According to police records and later reporting, the couple were heading to dinner when they were approached by a man and a woman riding bicycles. The male cyclist stopped, got off his bike, and, after a brief confrontation, punched and repeatedly stabbed Del Bosque in front of his partner before both assailants fled the scene on their bikes, leaving him critically injured on the street. Emergency responders transported him to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead that night.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators released information indicating that two suspects had been seen riding dark-colored BMX- or Mongoose-style bicycles and that one of them was a young female; a composite sketch of the girl was circulated to the public along with a plea for tips. Witness accounts suggested the pair might be teenagers, and early coverage emphasized how sudden and apparently unprovoked the attack appeared to be as Del Bosque and his fiancée walked to their planned meal. Family members publicly described their shock and grief, noting that he had been in the midst of planning a wedding with his childhood love and that his death came without warning in an ordinary moment of daily life.
Over the following weeks, detectives gathered surveillance footage from businesses in the area surrounding the stabbing scene. By tracking the movements of the bicyclists and analyzing the video, they were able to identify the woman seen riding with the attacker. That identification led police to a residence roughly a mile from where Del Bosque was killed. Executing a search warrant at the home on December 11, investigators reported finding a knife sealed inside a plastic bag in the woman's purse, as well as pants stained with what appeared to be blood inside the residence. The woman's boyfriend was identified as 35-year-old Jose Raphael Meza, a man who had previously served a prison term for aggravated assault.
On January 15, 2016, Phoenix police located Meza near Central Avenue and Broadway Road and arrested him on suspicion of second-degree murder in connection with Del Bosque's death. He was booked into jail and held without bond on one count of second-degree murder, with authorities citing the physical evidence recovered during the search and the surveillance footage that had helped trace the suspects' path. Case-tracking information later listed the homicide as “solved” following Meza's arrest, reflecting law enforcement's conclusion that they had identified the primary attacker. However, publicly available records focus mainly on the arrest and charging stage; open sources do not clearly document the ultimate outcome of the criminal case in court, nor do they indicate that the female companion was ever publicly charged in Del Bosque's killing.
