Sgt. Ray Tavizon travels to Louisiana to support evidence in a murder trial

Category: Front Page News Front Page News
Published: 16 September 2019 16 September 2019

On the night of July 21, 2017 Rick McBride, 61, of Walker, Louisiana, was brutally slain in his home by Blayson Fife who shot him as he lay in a reclining chair. Fife and several other young men had broken-into McBride’s residence to burglarize it. McBride was killed with one his own firearms, which Fife had taken. Fife returned to McBride’s home multiple times after the murder to steal more of his remaining possessions, with McBride’s undiscovered corpse present. Shortly thereafter, Fife and his friends fled to California. While enroute, they used the murder weapon (a handgun) to shoot at signage along Interstate 10 in Grant County New Mexico. One of Fife’s friends video-recorded and posted this activity. Fife and his accomplices were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol Agents at a checkpoint near El Paso, Texas on July 26, 2017 and extradited to Louisiana to stand trial.

In the course of their investigation, Louisiana authorities determined the video of Fife shooting at road signage had occurred at Separ (Grant County), NM. Grant County Detective Sergeant Ray Tavizon and Detective Adam Arellano responded to the location identified by Louisiana investigators where after a careful search of the area, they recovered one spent ammunition casing. The casing were collected and sent to Louisiana for analysis. It was determined to be from the same gun used to kill Rick McBride. Although Fife stated he had thrown the gun away in the same vicinity when a (U.S.) Border Patrol vehicle was seen, it was not located.

Sergeant Tavizon travelled to Livingston Parish, Louisiana in late-August 2019 to testify in Fife’s trial in the 21st Judicial District Court as to the location, collection and significance of the stated items of evidence he sent for crime-lab analysis. Fife was convicted of second-degree murder by a six-man, six-woman jury in just over one hour. He now faces a maximum of life in prison without benefit of parole.

Law enforcement agencies in the United States work together every day to bring justice to our communities. In this brutal and complicated matter, Sergeant Tavizon of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office (New Mexico) joined staff from the U.S. Border Patrol (El Paso Sector), the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office (New Mexico), the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office (Texas) in their cooperation with the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office, the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office (Louisiana), Assistant District Attorney Zach Daniels and the Louisiana State Crime Lab to bring a successful closure to this case.

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