On the evening of March 17, 2022, Gage Neal‑Belunas, 20, and his friend Kyle Ford, 23, were found dead of gunshot wounds inside a white Ford Taurus parked behind a vacant building near 10000 N. Metro Parkway East in Phoenix. The shooting is believed to have occurred earlier that day, about 5:15 p.m., in the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex; police were called to the vehicle around 11:00 p.m.

Friends and family remembered Gage as kind‑hearted and entrepreneurial, interested in opening a smoke shop and developing a t‑shirt line. An arrest was made about three months after the killings; a man was booked on one count of murder, but the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office later declined to prosecute, and no public explanation for that decision has been released.

The investigation remains open and a reward is being offered for information that could lead to an arrest and conviction. If anyone has information about the shooting or the victim’s movements that evening, please come forward.