NOGALES, Ariz.—The wife of an Arizona rancher accused of shooting and killing an illegal Mexican immigrant testified in court that she was “terrified” to see two men armed with rifles walking across the couple’s property the day the victim was found dead hours later.
The men were dressed in camouflage clothing and carrying “big brown backpacks,” Wanda Kelly testified under cross-examination by Santa Cruz County prosecutor Kimberly Hunley.
Mrs. Kelly testified that her husband, George Alan Kelly, first saw the men through windows while standing in the kitchen at about 2:30 p.m. local time on Jan. 30, 2023.
“Alan was standing at the counter having his lunch,” Mrs. Kelly told a jury on the seventh day of her husband’s trial in superior court.
“Alan said, ‘Wanda, be quiet. I just heard a shot.’”
Mr. Kelly, 75, faces charges of second-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the shooting death of 48-year-old Mexican citizen Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea.
Investigators recovered nine shell casings from the property’s east side porch, where Mr. Kelly allegedly fired the rifle from a distance of 115 yards.
On March 29, a ballistics expert testified the shell casings were “consistent” with the caliber used in an AK-47 rifle.
However, the prosecution witness said that the available evidence doesn’t show that the bullet that killed Mr. Cuen-Buitimea came from Mr. Kelly’s rifle.
Investigators have yet to locate the bullet that caused the fatal wound, which entered through the victim’s right side under the shoulder blade and exited his chest.
On April 2, a Pima County forensic pathologist testified that the bullet caused massive internal injuries and bleeding but couldn’t say whether an AK-47 made the wound. The amount of trauma was “consistent” with a gunshot from a high-powered rifle, the expert said.
Mrs. Kelly testified that she was standing behind a reclining chair, patting the family cat, when she saw two men through her living room window moving east to west about 150 feet away from the house.
“It just happened so fast,” she said. “Alan said, ‘Call Border Patrol.’”
The situation quickly turned chaotic, Mrs. Kelly said, when her husband grabbed his AK-47 semi-automatic rifle strapped to a coat hanger by the front door and went outside to investigate.
“I [then] heard gunshots,” she testified.
“Where were the gunshots that you heard?” Ms. Hunley asked the witness.
“Very close,” Mrs. Kelly responded.
“Did you believe they were Alan’s gunshots?” Ms. Hunley asked.
“Yes. I assumed [the shots] were from Alan shooting up in the air,” Mrs. Kelly said.
“And why?” Ms. Hunley asked.
“That’s what Alan does. That’s what Alan does as warning shots to go home,” responded Mrs. Kelly, adding that she didn’t see her husband fire the AK-47 as she was in the living room, hiding in front of the television, praying for his safety.
“I just stood there. I was afraid to look.”
When the shooting stopped, she looked out the window, relieved that Mr. Kelly “wasn’t lying on the ground,” she said.
“I said, ‘Thank you, Lord.’”
“Did you ever see the two men walk toward your home?” Ms. Hunley asked the witness.
“No,” Mrs. Kelly said.
“Did you ever see them point a gun at anyone?” Ms. Hunley asked.
“No,” Mrs. Kelly responded again.
Under cross-examination, Mrs. Kelly disputed incident reports by detectives that she saw five men walking along the fence line before the shooting started.
“I saw two. That’s what I told [detectives],” Mrs. Kelly said.
“But you don’t recall telling the deputies something different,” Ms. Hunley asked.
“Yes. Because I saw two, I don’t know how the five came into that,” Mrs. Kelly replied.
The prosecutor pressed the witness further. “But you would agree with me that’s what their reports indicated?” Ms. Hunley asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Kelly responded. “I don’t know how these agents got five. I never saw five. They had rifles because they were long—not pistols. I don’t know specifically. I just knew it was a rifle. I said they were like AK-47 things because they’re a long rifle.”
In her statements to an investigator, Mrs. Kelly said she saw two men walking 100 to 150 yards from the porch on the east side of the ranch house.
She later told a defense investigator the actual distance was 100 to 120 feet from the house and testified in court to the mistake in judgment.
To further impeach her testimony, the prosecutor questioned Mrs. Kelly as to the exact number of gunshots she heard from inside the house.
Mrs. Kelly grew angry on the witness stand and shouted, “I was not counting! My husband was out there facing down guys with guns, and you think I’m going to be there counting the number of shots?”
The prosecutor then asked the witness whether she had actually expressed to an investigator her learning about her husband’s discovery of a dead body when he returned from feeding the horse and dogs.
“Would you agree that you deliberately told [a detective] that you were not told he found a dead body [and] pretended your husband came back in and that the dogs found a dead body?” Ms. Hunley asked.
“No, I did not pretend,” Mrs. Kelly replied.
Mrs. Kelly again became emotional when pressed even further regarding discrepancies in her statements to investigators.
“I’m not going to jump in and say things,” she said. “That night was so confusing. I could have told you the sun rose in the west; it was [such] a confusing night.”
To Judge Thomas Fink, she said: “I’m sorry, judge. I’m losing my temper. I'll try to control myself.”
In her continued testimony, Mrs. Kelly, who wears a hearing aid, said that she was experiencing technical issues with the device on the day of the shooting.
“Could that account for why you did not hear the first shot?” asked Kathy Lowthorp, a defense attorney in the case.
“I’m sure that is why I didn’t, because now I can hear thunder,” Mrs. Kelly, now wearing a replacement hearing aid, responded.
Mrs. Kelly testified that she and her husband were high school sweethearts before they married and moved from North Carolina to Montana, where she worked as an elementary school teacher.
Her husband was a state fishery biologist and big on gun safety, Mrs. Kelly testified.
The couple operated a hunting and fishing lodge for a number of years in Montana before moving to Arizona in 1992 and later purchased property in Elgin, Kino Springs, and Nogales, Arizona, where the fatal shooting allegedly occurred.
“I imagine you must be torn between wanting to cooperate with the law and protecting your husband?” Ms. Lowthorp asked the witness during cross-examination.
Ms. Lowthorp also suggested the witness had an opportunity to lie about her husband’s involvement but that she “didn’t do that.”
“No,” Mrs. Kelly replied.
“So, you tried to tell the truth to the best of your ability?” Ms. Lowthorp asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Kelly replied.
Mrs. Kelly testified that her husband had several times fired his AK-47 in the air to scare off illegal immigrants.
“People started coming on our property in 2020 or 2021 [wearing] military garb and carrying rifles,” she said.
Mrs. Kelly said the situation left her feeling so afraid that she no longer goes out walking alone on her property.
“Alan has always been my protector,” she said with a quivering voice, adding that she was “afraid and praying” when the shots rang out on their property in late January.
Mrs. Kelly testified that when the shooting ended and she looked out the window to check on her husband, he was walking away in a southeast direction toward the location where the men had been walking.
“The blessing was he was not lying [dead] on the patio,” she said.
