A 37-year-old man with a violent criminal history, Rynn Prairie-Rocca, has been arrested in connection with the kidnapping of a 75-year-old woman and the murder of a 67-year-old man in Pearce, Arizona, near the Arizona-Mexico border.
The incident began on Friday evening when Prairie-Rocca allegedly entered the woman’s workshop wearing a mask and dark clothing, threatened her with a gun, and forced her into her home while blindfolding her. The woman later heard loud noises but was unable to identify them.
After dark, the suspect placed her in the backseat of her car, but she managed to escape and seek help at a nearby residence. Authorities later found the woman’s boyfriend dead in her home, though his identity has not been disclosed. Prairie-Rocca was identified as a suspect and described as possibly being accompanied by a large dog.
After an 18-hour standoff near Catclaw Road and Highway 181, he was found hiding in an abandoned RV and taken into custody on Saturday afternoon. The area had been under a shelter-in-place order during the standoff, which was lifted following his arrest. Prairie-Rocca, who had been released from prison in August 2024 after serving time for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in 2023, is now booked into the Cochise County jail.