Arizona 2000 cold case solved — arrest shocks community

In October 2000, 18-year-old basketball star Isabella Garcia left her Phoenix home on a cold Friday evening for her practice session at Phoenix West High School. Her red-and-white uniform was ready, her basketball shoes were laced, and she told her mother Maria to wait for her in the school parking lot after practice. She never came out. For 21 years, the Garcia family lived with unanswered questions and the unbearable weight of not knowing what happened to the girl they loved.
In July 2021, a demolition crew working on Phoenix West High School gymnasium discovered a sealed area behind the old equipment room. Forensic technicians analyzed DNA samples and concrete evidence from the area, and the results pointed to Thomas Wright, the trusted gymnasium custodian who had worked at the facility for 28 years. Wright had joined Isabella's search teams, comforted her grieving family, and spoken at memorial services — all while hiding a terrible secret about what really happened in the equipment room that Friday night.
This is the complete story of a gymnasium custodian's dark obsession, a family's 21-year search for answers, and how a storage area that refused to be demolished finally brought justice to a young champion who loved basketball more than anything in the world.