PRESCOTT, AZ — Prescott’s center square looks like a Norman Rockwell painting of a small western town: Children playing, families pushing strollers, elderly couples walking dogs, a metal statue of a local lawman, and people drinking early-evening beers at “Whisky Row” saloons.
But to Matt Massucci, it’s a facade.
“Although it’s beautiful, it’s very dangerous,” he said, sitting on the courthouse steps. “It doesn’t matter what you did. If they say you did it, you did it.”
For two years, Massucci faced the potential of a long stretch in prison.
The young construction worker was accused by a local fire department deputy chief and his family of pulling a gun and threatening them outside a gas station convenience store.
The false and unvetted allegations were all police needed to conduct a surprise high-risk traffic stop, hold Massucci at gunpoint, and charge him with multiple felonies, according to his defense attorneys and records and surveillance video obtained by ABC15.
Watch parts one and two of this ABC15 investigation in the player above and on the ABC15 Streaming App.
Massucci’s lawyers, Andy Marcantel and Joey Hamby, who specialize in self-defense cases, said the case exposes the harsh reality of the justice system in a small town.
“This case says that if you’re in a small town and somebody who is in the in-crowd decides to victimize you, you could have some problems,” said Marcantel.
The deputy fire chief, Dustin Parra, ignored repeated requests for comment.
The Yavapai County Attorney’s Office said it “cannot comment” and then ignored a follow-up question asking why not. Prescott police officials also ignored repeated requests until ABC15 showed up unannounced at their department’s headquarters.
During an impromptu interview in the lobby, a police spokesperson denied any wrongdoing.
“It’s hard to say it was anything other than really bad police work,” one of Massucci’s lawyers, Hamby, said. “They made up their mind when they got the call.”
THE INCIDENT
On July 16, 2023, Massucci stopped at a gas station to get a candy bar for his girlfriend.
As he was paying at the register, in-store security footage shows the Parra family’s car pull into the parking lot. The family was coming from a funeral for Dustin Parra’s brother, and they stopped at the store to buy beer.
Parra’s wife entered the store and Massucci walked out shortly later.
It was in the parking lot where the Parras would accuse Massucci, whom the family had never met, of a violent and unprovoked attack. Shortly after the incident, Parra’s wife, Malan, called 911 and emphasized her husband’s position in the community.
“My husband is a battalion chief for Central Yavapai, and this is not a joke,” she said. “The guy pulled a gun on my family.”
Dustin Parra is now Deputy of Chief of Operations for Central Arizona Fire and Medical.
During the 911 call and a follow-up phone interview with officers that night, Malan Parra and her teenage son claimed Dustin was trying to act as a peacekeeper.
“As [Massucci] was walking out, he was giving looks to my children, who were in the front two seats, driving their parents home,” Malan Parra said. “He started talking shit to my son, and my son said, ‘What?’ back… Then my husband jumped out of the backseat and the guy went and grabbed a fricken 9mm and pointed it at my husband’s heart… When the guy realized [Dustin] was Fire, he freaked out and sped out.”
Regarding the Parras' allegations, Marcantel gave a blunt assessment, saying “These are outright lies.”
The Parras would also claim that Massucci walked “around” their car while threatening him and had a gun in his waistband.
“None of it. Not a single piece of that is true,” Massucci said.
“What’s more likely? I became, for no apparent reason, verbally aggressive and presented a handgun and threatened them? Or this drunk man, on a very emotional day in his life, chose to pick a fight with someone because of how he looked?”
Security footage from inside the store shows Massucci walked straight to his car after leaving the store, according to his defense attorneys.
They also said enhanced outside footage would eventually prove it was Dustin Parra who confronted Massucci and trapped him inside his car by holding his door open and preventing him from leaving. That’s why Massucci said he pulled out his handgun from his center console.
THE ARREST
Matt Massucci left the gas station after the incident and did not contact police.
The Parra family also left the store and later called 911.
Acting on the family’s claims, a detective used the “FLOCK” system, which is a series of license plate readers along roads, to identify and track Massucci’s car.
Four days after the incident, a handful of officers conducted a high-risk traffic stop and ordered Massucci and his friend out of the car at gunpoint.
“We’re kind of sitting there. We noticed more and more cars started to appear. Then some guys got out,” Massucci told ABC15. “Some had handguns drawn. Eventually, you started seeing some bigger artillery, larger rifles and such.”
Body camera video shows one officer telling another to be prepared to use lethal force, if necessary.
“You know that one false move and every one of those guys is going to fire at you,” Massucci said. “I firmly believe that if I didn’t have a passenger in the car with me, they would have shot and killed me that day.”
Officers searched Massucci’s car and took him in for questioning.
“[A] detective came in. He opened up a folder. Put it on the table. Had a photo of me inside the convenience store. He said I’m going to ask you some questions. I told him I was going to plead the fifth,” Massucci said. “He closed the file and said I got you on camera. And he told me I was being charged with four felony charges.”
The charges were initially scratched then re-filed.
Massucci would end up being officially charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of disorderly conduct with a deadly weapon.
He first hired a local defense attorney who told him he was going to do prison time. Desperate, he hired Marcantel and Hamby, who are based in the Phoenix area.
Two years after the incident, his new set of attorneys finally beat the charges.
“Once we were able to enhance the video and see there actually was a forced entry in progress with a continued threat, that changed the entire case,” said Marcantel, one of Massucci’s defense attorneys, who was hired earlier this year.
‘BEING BIASED, DOESN’T HAPPEN’
Prescott police did not respond to requests for comment and an interview for more than a month.
So ABC15 went to their police headquarters and asked to speak with the department’s spokesperson, Lt. Gary Novak.
In person, Novak agreed to answer questions.
Novak said the stop and arrest were justified.
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NOVAK: It seemed there was potentially a gun involved, they felt it necessary to do a high-risk stop for officer safety and their safety.
ABC15: So why not call him, you know, and ask him, you know, we only have one side of the story?
NOVAK: I don’t know if they didn’t have his information, didn’t have his phone number, so that part, I don’t know why… You know this day and age, with the technology, the vehicle was found and officers went out there and that’s how they made the stop.
ABC15: You know with this technology, in this day and age, it seems they could have found a phone number?
NOVAK: You would think?
ABC15: Yeah.
NOVAK: But sometimes it’s not that easy to find a phone number.
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At the time of the traffic stop, police had fully identified Massucci.
Records show they had his name, license plate, a social media profile, Motor Vehicle Division information, and driver’s license photo.
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ABC15: Massucci’s claim is that there was really no due diligence done on the family’s claims at all. And when you look at the video, a lot of what they said, doesn’t appear to be true.
NOVAK: As far as which video?
ABC15: There’s surveillance video from the store where they said he walked around the vehicle, that he came back and pointed a gun at them, that he had a gun in his waistband. None of that appears to be true, at all. So, is that all it takes, someone to accuse you of something and you’re going to get pulled out of your car?
NOVAK: Of course not. Based on what they believe they saw in the video, they had probable cause to make the arrest.
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Novak defended the way the department handled the case and denied that police gave Parra and his family special treatment and consideration.
“Being biased, doesn’t happen,” he said.
The night of the incident, police interviewed Malan Parra and her teenage son over the phone. But officers did not interview Dustin Parra.
One of the responding officers wrote in his report that he did not speak with him that night because he was “upset and intoxicated.” But Parra wasn’t too intoxicated or upset to make a personal call to a local detective, who he knew, to request an investigation.
That was a glaring issue to Massucci’s defense team.
“You’ve got to be in the in-club to do something like that,” Marcantel said.
Lt. Novak said that’s not unusual in Prescott.
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NOVAK: I don’t want this to come off like this, but it’s Prescott. Right?
ABC15: Yeah.
NOVAK: I mean, everybody grew up here together. So, a lot of people know a lot of people. You know, the detective that investigated this case, born and raised here, grew up here. So, he knows a lot of people. So, it does happen where people call a specific officer
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ABC15: This fire chief, he got a lot of benefit of the doubt, right? He was apparently too drunk to be interviewed that night. Is that a courtesy we give everybody?
NOVAK: No, I believe the patrol officers interviewed him on-scene.
ABC15: No, he was never interviewed [that night]. It said in the report he was too upset and intoxicated.
NOVAK: They interviewed the son, correct?
ABC15: Right.
NOVAK: Who also said he saw the firearm. So, they went off that. And when he was arrested, they found a firearm that matched the description.
ABC15: He’s allowed to carry a firearm, right?
NOVAK: Absolutely. Absolutely.
THE VIDEO
There were issues with the security footage at the gas station, according to both Massucci’s defense attorneys and police reports.
A camera inside the store has a view of the Parras' vehicle but it doesn’t show Massucci’s car.
The store’s only outside camera captured Massucci’s car in the lower right corner, and it’s inexplicably missing 29 seconds of footage from the beginning of the confrontation.
Because the incident happened at night, the outside footage is rough.
“How could they lie so blatantly and confidently, knowing they were outside the convenience store and knew it was likely to be on camera? I theorize that the cops took a look at the surveillance cameras that night,” Marcantel said. “It was dark. It was grainy. You couldn’t see it. So, at that point, once Parra and his family were informed that they weren’t really showing any details of it, they went with the lie.”
When Marcantel and Hamby were hired several months ago, they had the video enhanced and then told Yavapai County prosecutor Mike Morrison to watch it at their office.
The result? A quick dismissal.
At a court hearing in July, Morrison told a judge, “What I saw with their assistance, your honor, has caused me to come to the opinion that this case can not and should not proceed.”
To help explain what happened, ABC15 put together a breakdown of the video. Watch that breakdown in the player below.
Massucci’s defense attorneys also raised questions about the body camera footage and whether police failed to document some of their interactions with the Parra family.
For example, when an officer briefly interviewed a store clerk, his body camera footage clearly shows him activating the camera, and there’s an audible beep indicating the start of the recording.
But the same night, the same officer recorded a phone interview with the Parra family as his body camera was rolling. The video provided to defense attorneys shows no visible activation or beep. It just starts.
Lt. Novak said police can’t erase or cut video.
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ABC15: They’re questioning whether that footage has been edited.
NOVAK: We can’t edit the Axon video, as far as like, erasing the video?
ABC15: Or cutting parts of it out?
NOVAK: No. That’s not possible.
‘NOT WELCOME HERE’
Matt Massucci has moved away from Prescott – and Arizona.
After his case was finally dropped, he returned to tell his story and to set the record straight.
When Massucci met ABC15 at the gas station where the incident happened, multiple store workers came out to greet and hug him. The workers, who knew Massucci because he visited the store often, were glad to hear his charges had been dropped.
“I was prosecuted with extreme prejudice,” he said. “No one did their due diligence. Nobody was interested in finding out the truth. They only wanted to go with what their friend said.”
In a media release following his arrest, Prescott police put out the following unattributed account that treated the family’s allegations as fact.
“Officers arrived on scene to learn that the male suspect exited the store and for no apparent reason became verbally aggressive, cursing and yelling at a family that was parked next to him. Included in the family was a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, who were seated in the vehicle. The father of the children intervened telling the suspect to stop cursing at his children. The suspect then produced a handgun and pointed it at the chest of the father as well as his children.”
With the case over, Massucci still thinks about how it impacted his own family.
He told us his mother had a stroke.
“Think about your son doing 60 years in an Arizona prison for something they didn’t do,” Massucci said. “You know, that’s a terrifying thought. And then you know…”
Fighting back tears, he stopped answering to collect himself. When asked if his mother is alright now, he nodded yes.
Massucci also said, after the interview, he planned to never come back to Prescott.
“I know I’m not welcome here. I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to be.”
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.