We cover a lot of stories about media bias against gun owners and the Second Amendment here at Bearing Arms, but it's also important to highlight those news items that truly are fair and balanced. To that end, I want to point out an outstanding report by ABC 15 in Phoenix, Arizona covering one gun owner's legal nightmare after he drew a gun to fend off a belligerent public official.
The story should be read in its entirety, but I'll give you a condensed version.
In July, 2023 a guy named Matt Massucci went to his local convenience store in Prescott, Arizona. When he gets back to his car he's angrily confronted by a local deputy fire chief named Justin Parra, who had stopped at the store with his family to get some beer after leaving his brother's funeral.
Enhanced security footage shows Parra confronting Massucci, trapping him inside his car by standing in the way of his open door. That's when Massucci drew his lawfully-owned handgun from the center console of his vehicle. Parra backed off and Massucci drove away, never bothering to contact police. Parra's wife, on the other hand, dialed 911 after Massucci left the scene.
“My husband is a battalion chief for Central Yavapai, and this is not a joke,” she said. “The guy pulled a gun on my family.”
Dustin Parra is now Deputy of Chief of Operations for Central Arizona Fire and Medical.
During the 911 call and a follow-up phone interview with officers that night, Malan Parra and her teenage son claimed Dustin was trying to act as a peacekeeper.
“As [Massucci] was walking out, he was giving looks to my children, who were in the front two seats, driving their parents home,” Malan Parra said. “He started talking shit to my son, and my son said, ‘What?’ back… Then my husband jumped out of the backseat and the guy went and grabbed a fricken 9mm and pointed it at my husband’s heart… When the guy realized [Dustin] was Fire, he freaked out and sped out.”
Four days later, Massucci is pulled over by police, ordered out of the car at gunpoint, and taken into custody on two counts of aggravated assault and one count of disorderly conduct with a deadly weapon.
It took two years, but Massucci's attorneys were finally able to get the charges dropped a few months ago. ABC 15 spoke to Prescott Police Lt. Gary Novak, who insisted that Parra had received no special treatment, and the investigation into Massucci was done by the book. However, the television station points out several troubling details of the case.
The night of the incident, police interviewed Malan Parra and her teenage son over the phone. But officers did not interview Dustin Parra.
One of the responding officers wrote in his report that he did not speak with him that night because he was “upset and intoxicated.” But Parra wasn’t too intoxicated or upset to make a personal call to a local detective, who he knew, to request an investigation.
That was a glaring issue to Massucci’s defense team.
“You’ve got to be in the in-club to do something like that,” Marcantel said.
Lt. Novak said that’s not unusual in Prescott.
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NOVAK: I don’t want this to come off like this, but it’s Prescott. Right?ABC15: Yeah.
NOVAK: I mean, everybody grew up here together. So, a lot of people know a lot of people. You know, the detective that investigated this case, born and raised here, grew up here. So, he knows a lot of people. So, it does happen where people call a specific officer
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ABC15: This fire chief, he got a lot of benefit of the doubt, right? He was apparently too drunk to be interviewed that night. Is that a courtesy we give everybody?NOVAK: No, I believe the patrol officers interviewed him on-scene.
ABC15: No, he was never interviewed [that night]. It said in the report he was too upset and intoxicated.
NOVAK: They interviewed the son, correct?
ABC15: Right.
NOVAK: Who also said he saw the firearm. So, they went off that. And when he was arrested, they found a firearm that matched the description.
ABC15: He’s allowed to carry a firearm, right?
NOVAK: Absolutely. Absolutely.
After Massucci's first attorney told him he was still looking at prison time if he took a plea deal, he hired Phoenix attorneys Andy Marcantel and Joey Hamby, who have a lot of experience in self-defense cases. That was a turning point, as the pair were able to obtain and enhance surveillance video from the convenience store that showed Massucci wasn't the aggressor in the incident.
“How could they lie so blatantly and confidently, knowing they were outside the convenience store and knew it was likely to be on camera? I theorize that the cops took a look at the surveillance cameras that night,” Marcantel said. “It was dark. It was grainy. You couldn’t see it. So, at that point, once Parra and his family were informed that they weren’t really showing any details of it, they went with the lie.”
When Marcantel and Hamby were hired several months ago, they had the video enhanced and then told Yavapai County prosecutor Mike Morrison to watch it at their office.
The result? A quick dismissal.
At a court hearing in July, Morrison told a judge, “What I saw with their assistance, your honor, has caused me to come to the opinion that this case can not and should not proceed.”
Why didn't the Prescott Police Department enhance that video as part of its investigation? Why did they arrest Massucci before even talking to him and getting his side of the story? Why did the department issue a press release after his arrest that presented the Parra's allegations as fact?
Marcatel says the case shows that if someone in the in-crowd in a small town decides to victimize someone, they can be in a world of trouble. Massucci, who moved away from Prescott and the state of Arizona after being cleared of all charges, but returned to speak to ABC 15, told the station he's never coming back.
“I know I’m not welcome here. I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to be.”
In any defensive gun use there's going to be an investigation, which is why it's important for gun owners to be aware of their rights and to have an attorney present at the earliest opportunity. I'd like to think that most of these investigations are going to be fair and unbiased, even in small towns, but it certainly sounds like Parra's account was taken at face value and there wasn't much effort to see if Massucci's side of the story could be corroborated.
With the video evidence exonerating Massucci, I'm kind of curious why Parra's wife hasn't been charged with filing a false police report, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Maybe ABC 15's Chief Investigative Reporter Dave Biscobing will do a follow up asking Lt. Novak if the Prescott PD launched an investigation into the Parras after prosecutors dropped the charges against Massucci, though it sounds like Massucci just wants to move on with his life and leave both Prescott and the Parra family behind.
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