This morning, two men testified about the death of Robin Blasnek, the young woman who is believed to be the final killing of the Serial Shooters. The 22-year-old was killed by a shotgun blast as she was walking by herself down a darkened Mesa street on July 30, 2006. Both men had striking and heart-wrenching stories about her dying moments. One man knew her. The other didn’t. One man learned from a TV news reporter about Blasnek’s death. The other held her as she bled to death. Here are their stories:
–
Rudy Reyes expected his friend, Robin, to arrive any minute. It was late at night, and she had called him saying she had just been arguing with her boyfriend and needed someone to talk to. Though it was dark, the young Mesa woman chose to walk the short distance from her house to the house near Gilbert Road and Grandview Street where Reyes was living with his parents.
The two chatted on their cell phones as she walked, but when she was getting close, Reyes said, they decided to hang up during the last stretch. “She was just like, ‘I’m right down the street,’” Reyes said. “She said she was going to call me when she was at the door.”
In the minutes that followed, Reyes heard a loud bang down the street, somewhere in the direction of Gilbert Road, just east of his home. He didn’t know what to think of the sound and sort of shrugged it off, he said. “It just flew right past me.”
Within moments, Robin’s name and number showed up on his caller ID, and he thought she was probably at his front door. He answered the phone, but no one was on the other end. “Then it just hung up,” Reyes said on the witness stand.
Robin never arrived. Eventually, Reyes went to bed and fell asleep, not knowing what happened to his friend. The next morning, a reporter from KNXV-TV (Channel 15) called his house and broke the news to him. Robin was dead.
–
When Charles Chase heard the bang, he went outside to investigate. He remembers thinking it was either a car backfiring or a gunshot. Either way, he wanted to find out what was happening just north of his house, which sat at the corner of Gilbert and Grandview in Mesa.
“When I stepped outside of the door and looked in that direction, i noticed a girl kneeling on the corner of the street,” Chase testified. “I went over to see what was going on.”
“I was shot,” the young woman told him, crouching on the sidewalk.
She began to fall to the ground, so Chase reached his arm around to steady her and hold her up. “When I pulled my hand away, it was covered in blood,” Chase said on the witness stand. The young woman did not appear to be in pain. She was not crying, but she was not saying much, either. He looked down and saw she was wearing slippers and pajamas. Her cell phone was lying on the ground.
Chase’s wife and children came out of the house to help. One of his sons called 911 as his wife fetched a blanket to pad the young woman against the concrete sidewalk. They laid her down on it while emergency crews were on their way. The woman began to breathe heavily. Then she began to fade.
“She kind of closed her eyes after that,” Chase said. “I don’t remember her opening her eyes again. And she didn’t say anything after that.”
Robin Blasnek appears in this undated photo submitted to the Tribune by one of her friends.
