Anyone’s child: On the 1-year anniversary of Preston Lord’s murder, a community looks back

A deep family tragedy, Preston Lord’s death has reverberated throughout the Valley and a year later appears just as senseless.

Lord, just 16, was brutally beaten during a Halloween house party in Queen Creek on Oct. 28, 2023. His struggle for life ended two days later on Oct. 30.

Seven young men, part of a group called the “Gilbert Goons,” were arrested in March and have been charged with Lord’s murder. The case is expected to go to court in summer 2025.

As the one-year-anniversary of Lord’s death approaches, community leaders, law enforcement and teens themselves are hoping for change.

“Preston Lord’s murder has highlighted to me the need in our community for connection and support,” stated Taumi Spencer, chair of Queen Creek’s newly formed Mayor’s Teen Advisory Committee, in an email. “At arguably the most connected time in history we have a notably large disconnect with each other.”

Katey McPherson, a local organizer and teen mental health advocate from Queen Creek, said two of her daughters almost attended the party where Lord was attacked.

“Two of my older daughters were out that night and scheduled to go to the party and then heard it was out of control, so they turned around and went to a different party,” McPherson said. “My friend’s kids were there. One of my friend’s kids gave Preston CPR.

“Early on in the first couple of days I was under the impression it was just like a pushing and shoving match, and somebody shoved him, and he hit his head on the concrete. I had no idea the extent to which all that happened.”

The Combs High School student was so severely beaten he was life-flighted from Chandler Regional Hospital to Phoenix Children’s Hospital where he was placed on life support.

The role of social media
With a culture saturated in social media, evidence in the investigation into Lord’s death was heavy with phone videos, text messages and internet chatter. It was both helpful and obstructive in the investigation, Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice revealed.

“Within a very short time, within the week, we had already identified most of the players. We understood what was going on. The challenge was gathering all the evidence necessary to support the things that we knew, so when people start doing the internet sleuthing that becomes a difficulty,” Brice said.

Internet sleuths claiming to have cracked the case may have actually hindered efforts to obtain the evidence needed to make arrests.

“People were making assumptions based on limited information and then touting that as the whole truth or the whole story,” Brice said. “That did make our job difficult because what it did was it discouraged people from calling us. It delayed information or evidence that we could have gotten earlier or at least confirmed what we knew.”

Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said while there were at least 600 pieces of digital evidence, a public demanding swift action from police may not have been aware that conventional detective work was still critical to making a case against the seven defendants.

“I think a lot of people are still under the impression that this homicide was caught on video, because they’ve seen all of the other (Gilbert assault) cases,” Mitchell said. “There was no video provided to police that showed this homicide and so it does kind of go back to some of the more traditional witness statements that you have to get.”

High emotions
Two months after Lord’s death, a frustrated Brice issued the remarkably candid statement that “some parents have actively refused to let their children participate in the investigation” and that charges would be submitted against anyone involved in the murder “regardless of connections to businesses, wealth, religious affiliation or political party.”

“I know it was a strong statement and some people took umbrage to what I said, but I wanted to make it clear that my staff was working very hard to get to all the evidence that we needed, and we had leads to certain people that would not talk to us,” Brice said. “Now, that’s their right, they don’t have to talk to us. But my frustration with that is that we were trying to solve a very tragic situation, and we wanted people to step up. The narrative that was out there was that there was some sort of nefarious cover up (by police).”

Mitchell said while the Lord case isn’t the most complex her office has faced, “it was difficult to manage communication-wise.”

She understands the public’s interest in the case — many parents saw their own children in Lord — but her office couldn’t reveal that an investigative grand jury had been empaneled and witnesses and leads were not cooperating.

“We’re still trying to get people to cooperate and (the public’s) like, ‘Well, are you going to do something?’ Yes of course we’re going to do something,” Mitchell said.

McPherson said it’s her understanding from her involvement with the Gilbert community that many teens kept silent about their experiences out of fear, even begging their families not to go to the police.

“I do understand why the boys didn’t come forward until Preston died,” she said. “I’m so thankful that they were so brave to come forward after. I do understand sort of how this went unchecked.”

McPherson has laid blame for the Gilbert Goons reign of violence on indifferent policing from the Gilbert Police Department, teens alienated by drugs, social media and lack of purpose, and the perpetrators’ parents.

“The parents were asleep at the wheel and or having their own mental health crisis,” she said.

Justice 4 Preston Lord
In the year since Lord’s death, a movement called Justice 4 Preston has become Justice4PrestonLord a 501(c)(3) nonprofit “dedicated to breaking the cycle of teen violence and fostering a culture of hope, healing, and positivity in the lives of our young people through education and community resources.”

McPherson said although she was involved early in the Justice 4 Preston movement, she is not a board member of the nonprofit, which includes Lord’s stepmother and most vocal family advocate Melissa Ciconte. She said she maintains strong connections with the Lord family and other community members now battling for teen safety.

She recalls that she first became involved because she wanted to bring an angry and hurt community together.

Over the year, she has also reflected on how Queen Creek initially was looked on as the epicenter of teen violence in the southeast Valley.

“Queen Creek was probably unfairly sort of stuck with the blame. I’ve been very vocal about this, so I don’t have a problem being vocal again that the runway to this happened in Gilbert for two years right and they did not intervene, and they did not do their jobs, and they continued to sort of downplay the significance and the outrageous behavior that happened,” McPherson said.

“Every single weekend for almost two years these boys beat someone at wherever they were. So, if that party hadn’t happened in Queen Creek there would have been another party that night and someone would have been hurt, someone would have been assaulted.”

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org.