A 53-year-old man who allegedly murdered a hunting companion in Excursion Inlet Sunday is a former Arizona legislator with a history of violence.
Mark Anthony DeSimone is charged with shooting Juneau resident Duilio Tony Rosales twice in the head during a hunting trip at a remote cabin.
DeSimone was elected to Arizona’s House of Representatives in November 2006.
According to the Arizona Republic, DeSimone was arrested by Phoenix police in June 2008 and charged with assault after “he held his wife down and punched her several times in the face and arms.”
According to a New York Times article, the assault charge was dropped after DeSimone resigned his seat and agreed to undergo counseling.
DeSimone was arraigned in Juneau Superior Court Tuesday on five charges stemming from the May 15 incident, including first-degree murder.
Troopers responded via aircraft around 9:20 p.m. to a remote beachfront cabin, where they found six men, including DeSimone.
One of the men handed over a .41 magnum double-action revolver and said it was “likely the firearm that was used in the shooting.”
Trooper Ryan Anderson found Rosales “lying in a pool of blood under a picnic table outdoors… Rosales had what appeared to be two gunshot wounds, approximately one inch apart, to the back of the head.”
“Rosales appeared to have been sitting on the picnic bench removing his boots when he was shot and rolled onto the ground. There was blood splatter on the railing deck, on the bench of the table, and there was a large pool of blood underneath his head,” the charging document said.
Rosales had an empty holster on his right hip.
Anderson interviewed one of the men who said he was urinating in the woods behind the cabin when the shooting occurred, around 7 p.m. The man initially thought the two gunshots he heard were someone target shooting, but when he walked back toward the front of the cabin, he encountered DeSimone, who said, “I shot Tony. I shot him. It’s my fault.”
The man called for his brother, who was hunting in the woods behind the cabin. DeSimone wanted to walk into the woods, but the others stopped him. DeSimone continued to mumble “something to the effect that he shot Tony, but that (the man) could not make out what DeSimone was saying,” according to the charging documents.
Sgt. Matthew Hightower would not release further details about the incident, including whether he believed alcohol or drugs were involved. “We are still at the very beginning stages of the investigation,” he said.
Rosales was a Juneau resident who had moved from Nicaragua, Hightower said.
According to the Arizona State Legislature’s website, DeSimone owned and operated a small business in central Phoenix for 17 years. He attended Arizona State University and spent two years living in Taiwan, teaching English and studying Mandarin Chinese.