After the death of 16-year-old Preston Lord at a Halloween party in 2023, a string of vicious, blitz-style attacks by a group of affluent teenagers known as the “Gilbert Goons” was uncovered. The rich, mostly white teens had been terrorizing the Gilbert, Ariz. area for years and threatened and intimidated their targets into silence.
The Arizona Republic tied the deadly beating to a string of assaults by a gang of elite teenagers. The reporting showed significant cover-up attempts, community outrage and inaction by local police who appeared to look the other way as teen assaults mounted up, months before one turned deadly.
Gilbert was the nexus of the attacks, which also occurred in Mesa, Chandler and Pinal County. Authorities did not begin making arrests in Goons attacks until after The Republic‘s report, when they reopened shelved cases and launched new investigations.
Visual elements were created from combing over 1,000 pages of police reports, videos posted on social media and court hearings and were woven together with interviews and drone footage to highlight the failures by officials.
