Inset: Adrian Aguilar (Arizona Department of Corrections). Background: The intersection where Aguilar fatally shot his girlfriend after crashing his car in Tempe, Ariz. (Google Maps).
An Arizona man will spend the rest of his life – and then some – behind bars for the vicious murder of his girlfriend in on-and-off spurts of gunfire due to his jealousy over her talking to a male friend.
In February, Adrian Aguilar, 23, was convicted by a jury in Maricopa County on one count of murder in the first degree, one count of kidnapping, and two counts of aggravated assault for the murder of 19-year-old Amria Crofton.
On Tuesday, he was sentenced to life in prison — plus an additional 26-year sentence.
“This young woman placed her trust in the defendant, and he repaid that trust with brutal violence,” Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said in a press release announcing the sentencing. “His actions were callous, calculated, and rooted in jealousy.”
The shooting occurred in June 2023, when the couple, who had been together for three months, were driving around together in Tempe, according to court documents obtained by The Arizona Republic.
On the day in question, the pair left work together around 1 p.m. and then went to a pool party, court records show. There, Aguilar used alcohol and cocaine before leaving. The defendant was planning on taking Crofton home when she started receiving texts from a friend asking her to hang out. Those requests upset Aguilar.
First, the man began interrogating the woman — asking her whether she was cheating on him. The woman denied the accusation, which upset Aguilar even more. Then, the man said he was mad at Crofton for wasting his time and threatened to shoot her unless she admitted to having an affair. Resolute, the woman still denied cheating.
Repeat attempts to elicit a confession over the suspected affair yielded the same answer over the course of some 45 minutes.
So, Aguilar followed through on his threat. First, he shot Crofton in the leg near the intersection of South Rural Road and East Broadway Road in the Jen Tilly Terrace neighborhood of Tempe. The man kept driving and headed west. Roughly a mile away, near the intersection of Broadway and Roosevelt Street, he shot her in the leg again.
The woman then began to cry and asked Aguilar to stop. But, enraged, he continued to drive, demand answers, and shoot the woman in different parts of her body in different locations throughout the Phoenix area — including once near the victim”s home — until the violence came to a head near 48th Street and Broadway. That’s where Aguilar turned the car around and Crofton tried to grab the gun, causing the weapon to discharge and the car to crash into a curb.
There, a witness finally saw Aguilar standing outside the vehicle and firing multiple shots into the passenger seat before walking off.
Next came the cover-up.
Police arrived to find the defendant himself suffering from a lone gunshot wound to his shoulder — as well as the victim who was not moving and was believed to be dead. Initially, Aguilar blamed the shooting on “some gang members” who came up to the car and fired at the couple. Police quickly countered the false narrative with witness statements and physical evidence from the scene of the crime that did not support the defendant’s story. After receiving his Miranda rights, Aguilar admitted to shooting Crofton “because he thought she disrespected him,” according to the DA’s office.
“The victim had eleven gunshot wounds to her head, neck, and torso as well as multiple injuries to her face, head, and hands,” the press release explains. “During the police interview, the defendant shared that the victim was scared, crying and asked to be taken home as he shot her.”
