Alleged UArizona Shooter: ‘i Felt Degraded By That Entire Department’

On Wednesday, Arizona professor Thomas Meixner was shot and died, and court filings have shed further light on the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

The interim complaint filed in Pima County Superior Court alleges that the alleged shooter, Murad Dervish, was dismissed from UArizona in February 2022 and prohibited from campus following many allegations of threats to staff members at the Harshbarger building.

UArizona at the time emailed its employees to alert the authorities if Dervish were to access the campus.

Several others in the building recognized him upon his arrival, and one of them alerted the police.

The papers state that Dervish murdered Meixner at about 2 p.m. with four 9mm shots. Bullet fragments wounded a second individual.

Then Dervish got in his car and went. About 30 miles south of Gila Bend, a cop pulled over his vehicle three hours after the incident. He was on Arizona Highway 85, which leads to Mexico.

Dervish disregarded the lights and horns telling him to stop. The officer used a PIT technique, which causes a vehicle to spin out and stop, to bring the vehicle to a halt.

When police searched his vehicle, they found a loaded 9mm pistol and eleven spent shot casings.

Dervish stated this after he was given his Miranda Rights but before he was questioned “In any case, I pray he’s OK. Probably nave thinking and I felt so humiliated by that whole department.” His other comments were, “a lady wouldn’t have done this,” and, “I was going to kill myself, shoot myself, but I couldn’t.”

Dervish is prohibited from having firearms due to an unrelated order of protection.

Dervish, 46, has been charged with murder in the first degree. He is being detained without bail after being processed into Pima County Jail. He was being cared for at the correctional hospital as of Friday morning.