QUEEN CREEK, AZ — It's been more than three months since Preston Lord died, and still, there have been no answers or arrests in the case. The 16-year-old was beaten at a Queen Creek Halloween party and later died.
Police have submitted recommended charges against seven people to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office back in December.
On Wednesday at County Attorney Rachel Mitchell's news conference, she shared a statement from the Lord family which urged patience.
"All of the people that are working in my department on this and the Queen Creek Police Department held a full meeting last week," said County Attorney Mitchell. "It was a large room and it was a full room.”
Mitchell did not take questions on the case but urged people to come forward if they have information.
"We're not done," said Queen Creek Police Chief Randy Brice. "We want to make this a very, very strong case."
That was repeated at the Queen Creek Town Council meeting by Chief Brice.
"But one thing that we want to make sure that the public knows is that sometimes there's this misconception that we have everything," said Chief Brice. "So if there's new information or additional information, or like the County Attorney talked about today, in her press conference, a different angle, before and after that provides context. And a lot of times people think, 'well, they must have that.' So we're just asking for anybody, anybody that has information about this case, come forward, talk to us, give us the details."
ABC15 also asked about the complexities present in Lord's case.
"Well, the complexity comes from the scope," said Chief Brice. "And certainly, I can't get into specific details, but when you're talking about several hundred people that we've interviewed, hundreds and hundreds of tips, lots and lots of information. As I've mentioned before, this isn't a very simple linear case, it's this piece led to this and this, and so a lot of putting the puzzle pieces together. And investigators have done a great job doing that. But it's very tedious and complex."
When asked about the role of social media in this case, Chief Brice called it "unprecedented."
"So I'll be honest with you, this is unprecedented for me," said Chief Brice. "I've been in this law enforcement for more than 30 years. So, now granted, the evolution of social media has really changed the way we do business. But to this level, no, I've never seen anything like this before. And the interest and I guess the feedback from the community has been great. But then there are those situations where it makes it even more complex for us when we're trying to figure out what's meaningful, what's not, and so on."
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