By Scott North and Jackson Holtz, Herald Writers
The harsh crack of gunfire rings out on the 911 tape.
An injured woman can be heard, begging for help and weeping for her slain husband and daughter.
“Oh my God,” she said at one point. “I can’t believe they killed my family.”
Officials in Pima County, Ariz., on Tuesday released a tape of the 911 call made during a May 30 home-invasion robbery.
The violence has led to first-degree murder charges for anti-immigration activist Shawna Forde.
The tape is the first piece of evidence investigators have released in their case against Forde, 41, of Everett.
On the tape, which was obtained by The Green Valley News &Sun, the shooting victim describes her attackers as having been dressed in camouflage clothing.
The armed intruders forced their way into her home by claiming to be law enforcement officers looking for a fugitive.
One was a tall man with his faced painted black, the victim said. She described another as tall and “Mexican.”
In their company was “a shorter, fat woman” who was white, the victim told a 911 dispatcher.
The intruders shot the victim’s husband, Raul Flores, 29, and their 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia.
The woman told police dispatchers that she was shot, too, but managed to get into another room where she got a handgun.
She drove the attackers away, and they dropped one of their weapons, perhaps a shotgun, she said.
But the attackers came back, as the woman was on the phone with the emergency dispatcher.
Shouts and gunfire were captured on the tape. Then the intruders left.
While she waited for police, the woman told dispatchers that the tall man with the painted face shot her husband. Her daughter also was shot multiple times.
The woman said she heard the child crying before the fatal bullets were fired.
The victim asked the dispatcher if she could be in trouble for shooting at the intruders.
No, the dispatcher reassured her. She’d clearly acted in self defense.
“I’m really scared they’re going to come back,” the caller said.
Arizona officials allege the home invasion and killings were planned by Forde as part of a scheme to get drugs and money to fund her border-watch group, Minutemen American Defense.
Also charged in the case are Jason Eugene Bush, 34, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42. Bush is an ex-convict who has claimed to be a special forces warrior.
Police in Wenatchee on Monday said Bush has “long-standing” links to white supremacist groups. Last week, he was quietly charged with second-degree murder in the 1997 stabbing and beating death of a Hispanic man from Wenatchee. Bush allegedly has been linked by genetic evidence.
Minutemen groups on Tuesday continued to distance themselves from Forde and those who were in her organization.
In addition to the killings in Arizona, police are investigating whether members of the group also committed a home invasion in Northern California.
Everett police continue to investigate the Dec. 22 shooting of Forde’s ex-husband at the home they’d earlier shared, and her Jan. 15 shooting in a north Everett alley, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said.
Detectives in Everett have been working with Arizona officials since before Forde’s arrest.
“We are taking the information that Arizona has to see if any of it is helpful to any of our cases,” Goetz said.
So far, he said, no firm suspects have emerged in the Everett cases involving Forde.
