TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) - Much of the Marana community is still processing a tragedy after an apparent murder-suicide happened on Tuesday, March 19.
That includes Oscar Baca Jr., who said his father Oscar Octavio Baca was the shooter.
“Numb. Just kind of shocking, sad. Just unexpected,” Baca Jr. said describing what the past few days have been like, “We are just trying to grieve together as a community and as a family.”
According to the Marana Police Department, 63-year-old Oscar Octavio Baca left his his home near Tangerine and Thornydale around 11:40 a.m. that day.
The Marana PD said Oscar Octavio Baca walked across the street, shot his neighbor and went home before he took his own life. The victim has not been identified.
Baca said the violence was not indicative of who he was.
“This is (community members) words, not mine, ‘he was the kindest person ever, the sweetest person ever’ and I knew him that way too, behind closed doors,” he said.
Oscar Baca Jr. said his father struggled with mental illness and it plagued him in the last few years of his life.
“It was nothing diagnoseable he just had a tendency to be prone to high anxiety,” Oscar Baca Jr. said.
He said his father’s anxiety worsened over the years and led to highly erratic episodes and was something that increased in the days leading up to the shooting. He also said his father had not been sleeping well.
“I know for a fact that by Sunday he was already, without getting into too many details, he was already experiencing things that weren’t in reality,” Oscar Baca Jr. said.
The anxiety and lack of sleep boiled over into the episode which led to the senseless crime.
The victim, who has yet to be named publicly by police, was a friend of Oscar Octavio Baca and his family.
“(The victim) was close with him, and I mean, as far as all I can attest the last four or five times, they came over to watch the (Arizona) basketball game,” Oscar Baca Jr. said. “I know they did errands together, sometimes he did stuff for the house together.”
13 News attempted to talk with the victim’s family, but they declined to comment. However, they have been talking to the Baca family.
“We’ve continued to check in daily and even in person and they’ve been so gracious. It would have been so easy for someone in the situation, the family in the situation, to try to be nasty about it and they’ve been the exact opposite,” Oscar Baca Jr. said.
The connection between these two families, much of which came through faith, is something Oscar Baca Jr. says has helped the healing process.
“It helps that we’re both families that (we) have good ties to church and faith because that makes reaching hope a lot easier,” he said.
Marana PD has declined to release any other information about the victim or this incident as they say it is an ongoing investigation.
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