Mesa Police Commemorate Officer Slain By Drunk, High Illegal Immigrant
By Staff Reporter |
On Sunday, Mother’s Day, the Mesa Police Department commemorated 10 years since the death of Sergeant Brandon Mendoza.
At 32 years old and with 13 years on the force, Mendoza was slain while returning from work by a drunk illegal immigrant driving the wrong way on the freeway. His killer, Raul Silva-Corona, had a lengthy criminal record and was driving without a license at the time of the accident. Silva-Corona was high on meth and his blood-alcohol content was .24 percent, three times the legal limit.
Mendoza died the day after Mother’s Day that year. Mendoza was survived by his parents, siblings, and extended family. It was Mendoza’s dream since childhood to become a police officer, according to his obituary and subsequent interviews with his mother, Mary Ann Mendoza.
Silva-Corona’s criminal record dated back for nearly 20 years to 1994, when he was arrested for burglary and assaulting an officer in Colorado. Silva-Corona skipped out on his sentencing hearing, avoiding detection until 2012 when Border Patrol discovered him in Arizona and transported him back to Colorado. Instead of imprisonment or deportation, Colorado sentenced Silva-Corona to probation and freed him.
Mendoza’s mother, Mary Ann, would later become a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, a sharp departure from predecessor Barack Obama and successor Joe Biden. Mary Ann appeared frequently on Trump’s 2016 campaign trail.
“Every person who’s here illegally is going to have a sob story about their family being ripped apart,” said Mendoza in 2017. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them if they’ve committed a crime. My family’s already been ripped apart.”
After her son’s death, Mary Ann petitioned Obama to ban illegal immigrants from registering vehicles. She also founded Angel Families, a national support and advocacy group for families of individuals killed by illegal immigrants. Mendoza’s organization is engaging in a class action lawsuit against the Biden administration over not enforcing immigration laws.
Mary Ann was a guest speaker for the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC).
“Every one of the crimes [Silva-Corona] committed had laws that should’ve resulted in jail time, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I had my son’s life stolen from me by a man who was three times the legal limit drunk, was high on meth, and drove for over 35 miles the wrong way on four different freeways, and he had no business being in this country,” said Mary Ann. “His death has left a large void in many people’s lives. This is a good cop’s story, cut short.”
Mendoza was one of the first officers to volunteer to wear a body camera.
Mary Ann was the guest of Congressman Andy Biggs for the 2020 State of the Union address.
The City of Mesa honored Mendoza’s memory in 2015 through the renaming of its baseball field at Guerrero Rotary Park, “Mendoza Field.”
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