Christopher G. Palacios was spending the evening with relatives and friends at a family barbecue in west Phoenix when his life was cut short in early spring 2013. He was 26 years old, a Hispanic/Latino male from Phoenix who had grown up in the area and previously lived in nearby Tolleson. He had been born in Phoenix on February 4, 1987, and by 2013 he was a young husband and father, married to Danielle and raising their son, Christopher Jr., while remaining close to his parents, Cesar Palacios and Silvia Martinez.
On the night of Saturday, March 2, 2013, family and friends gathered at a home near 27th Avenue and Buckeye Road in west Phoenix. The property sits along West Papago Street, where people had come together to socialize, eat, and drink late into the evening. At about 10:40 p.m., a man arrived at the gathering and became involved in an argument with people at the barbecue. Accounts later given to investigators indicate that when the confrontation escalated, Christopher stepped in to defend a friend who was at the center of the dispute. In the midst of the argument, the other man produced a handgun and shot Christopher in the chest. He collapsed from the wound and later died from his injuries, turning a casual family gathering into a homicide scene in seconds.
Witnesses told police that the shooter fled immediately after the gunfire, driving away from 2700 West Papago Street in a black or gray four-door vehicle. Investigators circulated a public bulletin through Silent Witness with a composite of the suspected gunman and a physical description that emphasized his build, height, and clothing, including an Arizona Cardinals football jersey bearing the number 11. Detectives canvassed the area and interviewed attendees, but the suspect’s identity remained unclear in the days after the shooting. As part of their forensic work, police collected beer cans and other potential evidence from around the yard, hoping that DNA recovered from the items would eventually point to a name.
For several years the case remained unsolved publicly, even as Christopher’s family pushed for answers. The breakthrough finally came when DNA from the beer cans at the barbecue was matched to a man who had previously served time in state prison for aggravated assault. In January 2016, nearly three years after the shooting, investigators arrested 36-year-old Joseph Albert Tellez at his home in Avondale, west of Phoenix. Court documents and news reports state that he was charged in connection with the 2013 killing and held on a $750,000 bond, with detectives describing him as the man who argued with Christopher at the barbecue and fired the fatal shot.
Subsequent court records show that prosecutors pursued charges tied to the violence at the gathering, and Tellez was ultimately convicted of three counts of attempted aggravated assault stemming from the March 2, 2013 incident in which the victim identified in the record only as “C.P.” was shot and later died. Appellate decisions note that he pointed a gun at several people during the confrontation, shot C.P., and then threatened other guests before fleeing, and that he received aggravated seven-year prison terms on each count, with two running at the same time and one consecutive, for a total of fourteen years in prison. Online case summaries that link those court documents with local reporting on the family barbecue shooting identify C.P. as Christopher Palacios, and homicide-tracking databases now list his case as solved, with a named offender tied to the events that took his life on that March night in Phoenix.
