13-03-2025
Phoenix police recommend charges against 6 in Sky Harbor Christmas shooting
Phoenix police have recommended charges against three adults and three teenagers under 18 in the violent Christmas night altercation inside Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor International Airport.
Three people were shot and one person was stabbed on Dec. 25, 2024. The fight occurred near a restaurant outside the airport's security checkpoints.
Phoenix police detectives submitted their case for review to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and the Juvenile Court Center and were awaiting charging decisions, according to a Phoenix police update on Wednesday.
The recommended charges included unlawful imprisonment, disorderly conduct, aggravated assault, facilitation and assault, police said.
"Detectives in this investigation sifted through hundreds of pieces of evidence, surveillance footage, and interviews," Phoenix police said in the update.
Phoenix police airport officers originally responded to a shooting call about 9:45 p.m. and found three people wounded by gunshots — a woman critically injured and two men with non-life threatening injuries. A fourth man, detained in an airport parking garage, suffered a stab wound.
Two men, one woman, two teenage girls and one teenage boy, all of whom were known to each other, were involved in a fight, police confirmed. One of the men pulled out a gun and fired multiple times, striking the woman and the teenage boy, police said. The other man also was injured.
The boy who was struck was armed with a knife and stabbed the man who fired the gun, according to police. The woman who was shot was hospitalized, and her current condition was unknown. The other three injured people were treated at hospitals and released.
A couple of hours after the shooting, a man reportedly reacting to a text falsely describing an active shooter at Sky Harbor arrived at the airport with numerous firearms and was arrested after a brief altercation with Phoenix police.
"There was no active shooter; there never was," Sgt. Mayra Reeson said at a news conference at the time.
There was no update on the man or any charges against him Wednesday.
The Republic's Rey Covarrubias Jr. and Michelle Cruz contributed to this article.
What we know: Sky Harbor airport had 10 near-crashes in the past decade
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix police recommend charging 6 in Sky Harbor Christmas shooting
