Official Blames ‘Hate Radio’ for Her Shooting Over Stadium Tax

A county supervisor blamed “hate radio” for inciting a man with a history of mental problems to shoot her over her support of a baseball stadium tax.

“I think they’ve wound people up in a frenzy. I hope the hate that’s spewed out of these stations will stop,” Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said in an interview.

Wilcox was shot and wounded in the pelvis Wednesday as she left the auditorium where the five-member governing board had just met. She remained hospitalized Thursday in good condition.

Larry Marvin Naman, who was arrested immediately after the shooting, read a statement from jail hours later saying he shot Wilcox because she supported a sales tax to help pay for the Arizona Diamondbacks’ $350-million ballpark, now being built in downtown Phoenix.

Citizen activists have criticized the supervisors for not putting the tax to a public vote. Wilcox was the only supervisor to attend the 1995 groundbreaking for the stadium.

Her husband, former state Rep. Earl Wilcox, declined to specify any station but said his wife “had been subjected to a lot of abuse” since she voted for the tax.

KFYI-AM radio talk host Bob Mohan, who has been outspoken in criticizing Wilcox, said on the air after the shooting that he expected to be blamed but said it would be unfair.

On the air Thursday, he denounced the shooting and told his audience to use peaceful means to show their opposition to the stadium tax. “If you don’t like it . . . vote them out. Put the guns away,” he said.

Meantime, more details emerged about the 49-year-old suspect, who was jailed on an attempted murder charge.

Naman was acquitted of murder in a 1982 slaying after a psychiatrist assessed the man’s confession as the product of a “disordered and deluded mind.”

Records from Naman’s 1989 trial in the slaying of James Roth in Tempe indicated that a jury acquitted him in less than two hours after a two-day trial.