Fernando Pablos

On the morning of April 20, 2025, police responded to reports of a shooting at an apartment complex in the 1000 block of East Milton Road in Tucson, Arizona. The call came in around 11:00 a.m., shattering the quiet of the neighborhood. Inside one of the apartments, officers found Fernando Isaac Pablos, a 33-year-old Hispanic man, suffering from gunshot trauma. Police and paramedics from the Tucson Fire Department rendered aid, but his injuries were too severe. Mr. Pablos was pronounced dead at the scene.

Homicide detectives learned that Mr. Pablos had gone to visit a friend at the apartment that morning. According to the friend who lived there, a knock came at the door. When she opened it, a woman was standing there asking to speak with Mr. Pablos. Suddenly, an unknown man who was with the woman pushed his way inside and put a gun to Mr. Pablos’s head. The tenant told the pair to leave. As she moved to open the front door for them, she heard two to three gunshots. When she turned around, she saw that the man had shot Mr. Pablos several times. The man and woman then fled in a white four-door sedan.

The investigation quickly focused on two suspects. The tenant identified the woman at the door as Ambar Esthela Morales, the older sister of Mr. Pablos's ex-girlfriend. Investigators were told that Morales believed Mr. Pablos had stolen something from her and that she and her cousin had gone to the apartment to get it back. On April 21, police arrested Morales, then 33. The following day, they arrested her cousin, Manny Romero, Jr. Morales was initially charged with felony murder and first-degree burglary.

The case against Ambar Morales concluded when she accepted a plea agreement on March 2 of the following year. She pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter and one count of possession of a dangerous drug for sale. On May 4, a judge sentenced her to 15 years in prison, with credit for 378 days served. As of May, her co-defendant, Manny Romero, Jr., was facing trial proceedings, with a trial scheduled to begin in September.