The Gilbert Goons: Preston Lord’s Murder, Charges, and Preston’s Law

The Gilbert Goons were a loosely organized group of roughly two dozen teenagers and young adults from Gilbert, Queen Creek, Mesa, and Chandler, Arizona, who carried out an estimated 95 assaults across at least 18 incidents from late 2022 through 2023. The group drew national attention after 16-year-old Preston Lord was fatally beaten outside a Halloween party in Queen Creek on October 28, 2023. Seven people were charged with first-degree murder in Lord’s death, dozens more were arrested for related beatings, and in May 2024 the Gilbert Police Department formally designated the group a criminal street gang.¹

Who the Group Was

Reporting by the New Yorker and the Arizona Republic described the members as mostly white, upper-middle-class teenagers from multiple high schools in one of the Phoenix area’s most affluent suburban corridors.² Many were athletes or high-achieving students. Videos recovered from social media showed members wearing designer clothing, driving customized cars, and flashing handguns, cash, and drugs.³

The name reportedly originated in a Snapchat group; members had called themselves the “Goonies” in middle school.² They used social media to lure victims to parties, parks, and restaurant parking lots, ambushed them in groups, and recorded the beatings for private group chats and platforms like Instagram and TikTok. After attacks, members allegedly sent death threats, contacted victims’ families, and drove by their homes.⁴

Detectives obtained Snapchat group chats with names like “The Streets,” “Goofy Goobers,” and “Untouchable Ninjas,” where members bragged about assaults, mocked police, and belittled victims. In one December 2022 message, a member wrote about the group facing “30+ assaults.” Another asked about obtaining brass knuckles, writing, “I’m tryin to send these kids to hospital.”⁵

The Killing of Preston Lord

Preston Lord, a 16-year-old student at Combs High School, was attacked on the night of October 28, 2023, as he left a Halloween party near 194th Street and Via Del Rancho in Queen Creek. Queen Creek police received a 911 call at 9:49 p.m. and found Lord lying in the roadway with life-threatening injuries.⁶ He died two days later, on October 30, 2023.⁷ The Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide on February 14, 2024.

The investigation was unusually large. Queen Creek police served more than 50 search warrants, processed over 500 tips, and worked the case alongside the FBI, which joined on November 14, 2023. A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest. Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell later described the case file as containing an 1,800-page police report and 2,000 pieces of evidence, including 600 videos.⁷

The Seven Defendants and Where the Cases Stand

In March 2024, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office charged seven people as adults in Lord’s death. All seven were charged with first-degree murder (or, in the alternative, second-degree murder) and kidnapping. Three of them — Jacob Meisner, Treston Billey, and Dominic Turner — also face aggravated robbery charges. The other four are Talan Renner, William Owen Hines, Taylor Sherman, and Talyn Vigil. All seven initially pleaded not guilty.⁶⁷

William Owen Hines: Plea and Sentence

Hines was the first defendant to resolve his case. On March 4, 2025, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Lord’s death, along with aggravated assault charges tied to a separate drunken-driving case and two other Gilbert Goons beatings.⁸ Prosecutors dropped a kidnapping charge as part of the deal, and Hines was not required to testify against the other defendants.⁹

On May 2, 2025, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott McCoy sentenced Hines to 12 years for manslaughter and a consecutive 5 years for vehicular aggravated assault, for a combined 17-year prison term. Hines received credit for 456 days already served and faces at least three years of probation afterward.⁹ At the hearing, Hines told the court that the events of the attack “horrified” him and that Lord “didn’t deserve not one of those kicks or punches.” Mitchell said Hines had “shown us through not just one, but a series of acts, that he is unfit for society.”⁸

The Six Remaining Defendants

Meisner, Renner, Billey, Turner, Sherman, and Vigil continue to face first-degree murder and kidnapping charges, with Meisner, Billey, and Turner also facing aggravated robbery. All have pleaded not guilty.¹⁰

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers set a single trial start date of October 1, 2026, with the plan that one trial would begin as soon as the previous one ended. The prosecution’s intended order is Meisner first, then Renner, then Billey and Turner tried together, then Sherman and Vigil tried together. Each trial is expected to last at least six weeks.¹⁰ Whether the October date holds is uncertain. Renner’s defense team has said in court filings it will not be ready until April 2027, and Billey’s attorney has called the October date “unrealistic.”¹¹

Meisner is the only remaining defendant still in custody. Prosecutors have alleged he has been contacting witnesses; his defense team says they are complying with the state’s requests for documentation. Meisner has declined a plea deal and maintains he is not responsible for Lord’s death. No plea offers have been extended by the state to the six remaining defendants.¹¹

Vigil has been out of custody on $1 million bail with house arrest and electronic monitoring since April 2024. He was arrested in fall 2025 for violating an order of protection and again in February 2026 for reckless driving.¹² Prosecutors asked the court to revoke or tighten his release conditions, but Judge Myers denied the request, finding that Vigil did not pose a threat to the community or a flight risk.¹³

Defense attorneys have filed motions to sever the trials, arguing the Gilbert Goons label carries a “harmful rub-off effect” that would prejudice juries against individual clients.¹⁴ Judge Myers denied requests from Sherman and Vigil for entirely separate trials, ruling their defenses were not “antagonistic, mutually exclusive or irreconcilable.”¹⁰

The Wider Pattern of Assaults

Investigators eventually linked the group to at least 18 distinct incidents involving an estimated 95 assaults dating back to late 2022.² Attacks occurred in Gilbert, Queen Creek, Mesa, Chandler, and San Tan Valley, at mall parking lots, In-N-Out restaurants, house parties, parks, and downtown parking garages.⁷ Brass knuckles were used frequently.¹⁵

Documented victims include 17-year-old Connor Jarnagan, beaten in December 2022 while sitting in his car outside a Gilbert In-N-Out and left needing staples in his head after an attack involving brass knuckles;⁷ the teenage son of Rick Kuehner, attacked at a Gilbert In-N-Out in August 2023, an incident that resulted in six arrests including Christopher Fantastic, Aris Arredondo, and Deleon Haynes; and a minor attacked in Mesa in May 2023 whose mother filed a complaint naming nine people, with the victim reportedly receiving threats for more than six months afterward, some of them referencing Preston Lord’s death.¹⁵

Beatings in November and December 2022 led to the arrests of Kyler Renner, Gage Garrison, and others near Higley and Riggs roads and in a downtown Gilbert parking garage.⁷ The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office tallied 14 charges against 7 juveniles and 40 charges against 13 adults tied to the broader pattern of incidents.¹⁶

Tyler Freeman, 18, identified in reporting as a prominent member of the group, was first convicted in juvenile court for two brass-knuckles assaults and later arrested on three additional adult cases.⁵ Freeman pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for a December 2022 attack at a Gilbert In-N-Out and a separate house-party assault, and was sentenced to prison in November 2024. At sentencing, prosecutors played recorded jail phone calls in which Freeman joked about violence and disparaged Lord by name.¹⁷

Criminal Street Gang Designation

On May 2, 2024, Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg announced that the Gilbert Goons met the legal criteria to be classified as a criminal street gang under Arizona Revised Statutes section 13-2321. The department’s investigation into the group’s gang status ran from November 2023 through May 2024.¹

Police categorized the group specifically as a “hybrid gang,” a U.S. Department of Justice term for loosely affiliated groups not bound by a single location, sometimes affiliated with other gangs, and lacking a formal code of conduct.¹⁸ Soelberg emphasized that “the simple act of creating a name and calling oneself by that name is not enough in and of itself to qualify for gang status.”¹ Police said the evidence was not sufficient to add specific gang-related charges against defendants in the pending cases, but the intelligence gathered was turned over to county attorneys for potential use in future prosecutions or sentencing enhancements.¹⁹

Why the Pattern Went Unchecked

A recurring question after Lord’s death was why the attacks had been allowed to escalate for more than a year before anyone connected them. Gilbert police initially investigated multiple reports of teen violence as isolated incidents without identifying a link. One witness quoted in reporting said fights happened at a local In-N-Out “all summer long” and “cops never did anything about it.”²⁰ Many assaults went unreported for months, and some cases were only reopened after online tips emerged following the Arizona Republic‘s investigation.⁷

Preston Lord’s parents publicly criticized Gilbert police for allegedly having knowledge of prior attacks and failing to intervene. Soelberg responded that many of the prior assaults had not been reported and that investigators did not realize the incidents were connected until after Lord’s death.²¹ The New Yorker reported that former city officials and community members described a culture of “willful denial” in Gilbert, with a fear that publicizing teen violence would hurt economic development.²

Civil Lawsuits

Rick Kuehner filed a civil suit in Maricopa County on February 8, 2024, naming 50 people, including 17 alleged group members and 30 of their parents and guardians. The suit alleged civil conspiracy, negligent supervision, and statutory liability against the parents.²² Kuehner also filed a separate $6 million notice of claim against the Chandler Unified School District and the Gilbert Police Department, alleging they ignored social media evidence of threats and that school officials “refused to take meaningful action” against the attackers.²³

Nicholas Lord and Autumn Curiel filed a wrongful death lawsuit on July 10, 2024, naming the seven criminal defendants, the parents of Talan Renner, and Roberto and Emily Correa, who owned the home where the Halloween party took place.²⁴ The suit alleged that Travis and Rebecca Renner knew about their son’s violent tendencies, citing a fifth-grade threat to “shoot up” his school and an alleged assault on a fellow resident at a Utah boarding school.²⁵ The Correas were accused of being home during the party, being under the influence of alcohol, and making alcohol readily available to minors. Both civil cases remain pending.

Preston’s Law

The violence prompted new state legislation. Arizona House Bill 2611, known as Preston’s Law, was introduced by State Representative Matt Gress, with co-sponsors including House Majority Whip Julie Willoughby and Representatives Lauren Hendrix, Michael Way, and Jeff Weninger.²⁶ The law creates a new category of aggravated assault for “swarming” attacks in which an assailant has two or more accomplices present. It upgrades such offenses from a Class 6 felony to a Class 4 felony, raises the minimum sentence from one year to 2.5 years, and prevents the charges from being reduced to a misdemeanor. Governor Katie Hobbs signed the bill into law on May 12, 2025.⁷

1
KTAR News. Gilbert Goons Are Officially Designated as a Street Gang
2
The New Yorker. How a Homegrown Teen Gang Punctured the Image of an Upscale Community
3
Arizona Republic. Who Are the Gilbert Goons
4
Courthouse News Service. Gilbert Goons Victim Sues Perpetrators of Vicious Beatings
5
Arizona Republic. Gilbert Police Had Evidence of Attacks Long Before Death of Preston Lord
6
Queen Creek Police Department. Homicide Case of Preston Lord
7
KTAR News. Gilbert Goons East Valley Youth Violence
8
Arizona’s Family. First of Seven Suspects in Preston Lords Murder to Be Sentenced
9
Arizona Republic. William Owen Hines Sentencing in Preston Lord Death
10
Arizona Republic. Preston Lord Murder Trials Delayed
11
Arizona’s Family. Six Suspects in Preston Lords Murder Scheduled for Court as Trial Start Date Looms
12
ABC15. Judge Hears Arguments on Preston Lord Defendants Release Case
13
Arizona Republic. Preston Lord Defendant Talyn Vigil to Remain Out of Custody
14
ABC15. Court Documents Reveal New Insight Into Gilbert Goons Investigation
15
ABC15. Timeline: A Look at Teen Violence in the East Valley
16
Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. East Valley Teen Violence
17
Arizona Republic. Tyler Freeman Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Gilbert Goons Attacks
18
Arizona’s Family. Gilbert Police Provide Update on Teen Violence Investigations
19
FOX 10 Phoenix. Gilbert Goons Officially Classified as a Criminal Street Gang
20
Arizona’s Family. Gang Charges in Gilbert Goons Cases Would Add Sentences
21
Arizona Mirror. Bill to Make Gilbert Goons Style Attacks Felonies Moves Forward in Arizona Senate
22
ABC15. Father Files Civil Lawsuit Against Alleged Gilbert Goons Individuals and Their Parents Over Attacks
23
Arizona’s Family. $6 Million Notice of Claim Alleges Gilbert PD and Chandler USD Failed to Protect Teen
24
Arizona’s Family. Lord Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Seven Suspects and Parents
25
FOX 10 Phoenix. Preston Lords Parents File Wrongful Death Lawsuit
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Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Prestons Law Announcement