The Arizona rancher accused of fatally shooting a Mexican national said he is ready to “start life over again” after prosecutors dropped charges against him.
“It’s not my fault. I didn’t do it,” George Alan Kelly, 75, told NewsNation days after his trial for the second-degree murder of 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea ended in a hung jury in his favor.
“Somebody else is responsible for that,” Kelly said, maintaining that he had only fired warning shots in the air to scare away men walking on his cattle ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border.
The septuagenarian said that Cuen-Buitimea had “turned towards” him and “pointed the AK at me.”
“And that’s when — everybody says was the dumbest thing I ever did — they said you should have shot him because he was getting ready to shoot you,” Kelly said.
“I don’t know what, but I said, ‘Nah, I’m not gonna do it,’” he said.
“And so I shot over the trees over the top of his head, and thank God him and the other guys ran,” he said, recalling his hunting dogs then leading him to the body.
Prosecutors instead claimed Kelly actually fired nine shots with an AK-47, one of which struck and killed Cuen-Buitimea.
“They accused me of shooting him,” he said. “I don’t feel that I was treated fairly in the investigation. I think I was arrested without cause, without probable cause.”
Kelly called his time in custody “the worst 22 days of my life.”
“If hell is anything like that, I’m gonna do everything I can not to go,” he said of the experience.
But now prosecutors have confirmed they are not pursuing a fresh trial, Kelly said he and his wife are ready to “start life over again” — still at the US-Mexico border.
“I’ve lived in a place like this all my life. I’m not afraid to exist here. But I know that it’s a definite risk,” he admitted.
Still, he faces challenges from the lengthy legal battle.
“We have no funds. Our life savings, it’s gone,” he said.
“That cloud’s still over my head. It’s a long road, and we’re not out of danger yet, but we’re not giving up. I’m not going to let them beat me down.”
