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Officer Marc Atkinson, 28 Phoenix Police Department
Murdered March 28, 1999

Officer Atkinson was working a drug suppression detail, surveilling a white Lincoln Continental when his partners got called away on another detail. Shortly thereafter, three men emerged from the location and entered the vehicle. Officer Atkinson began tailing the vehicle but temporarily lost visual contact. As he turned north in search of the vehicle, 17 year old Felipe Petrona-Cabana emerged from the driver’s side and began filing his .357 caliber revolver. Atkinson was struck twice in the head and died the next day. A security guard on his way home from work observed the shooting and opened fire injuring Petrona-Cabana, who was taken into custody. Petrona-Cabana was an illegal alien who came to the United States seven months earlier from a small farming community near Acapulco in the State of Guerrero. A pound of cocaine was ultimately recovered from the vehicle.

All three suspects were illegal aliens from the same small town and were sentenced to natural life. The shooter, Petrona-Cabana, was represented in part, by an attorney hired by Mexico who successfully argued against the death penalty. Had they made it back across the border, Mexico would have demanded a determinate sentence before extraditing.

Detective Hugo Arango, 24, Doroville Police Department
Murdered May 13, 2000

Detective Arango was shot and killed after having been flagged down by a club patron who indicated that some men had been breaking into cars outside of a nightclub. Detective Arango located three suspects and detained them. As he searched for weapons, illegal alien Bautista Ramirez shot Arango four times. The first shot took off one of his fingers, the second through his thigh. As Arango lay on the ground helpless, Ramirez intentionally fired one round through his badge and then executed Arango with a shot to his head which severed his brain stem.

Unfortunately for Ramirez, he had left his wallet on the top of the patrol car and was quickly apprehended. The trial was delayed while his defense attorney appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that Hispanics were under-represented by the grand jury that indicted him. On June 25, 2003, Ramirez was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life plus twenty years.