On New Year’s Eve 2022, 25-year-old Raymond Hernandez Jr. was found with a gunshot wound near 10000 West Payson Road in Phoenix, Arizona. Phoenix police officers responded to the residential neighborhood and the Phoenix Fire Department transported Hernandez to a local hospital, where he later died; the cause of death was ruled to be the gunshot wound.

The Phoenix Police Department’s Homicide Bureau opened an investigation and began collecting evidence and seeking public assistance to reconstruct what happened that night. A significant development came on January 12, 2023, when a 40-year-old man named Cary Smith turned himself in and was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder, then booked into the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office jail.

If anyone has information about the shooting or saw activity near West Payson Road on New Year’s Eve 2022, please share what you know with investigators.