In a somber turn of justice, Maricopa County has witnessed the sentencing of Antwaun Ware to a natural life in prison for the murder of Jasmine Dunbar, a young mother whose life was brutally snuffed out in 2018. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office declared that Ware pleaded guilty to the heinous crimes, including First-Degree Felony Murder and Endangerment.
The case, which has been following its slow and inexorable progress toward this resolution, tore at the community's heartstrings when a passer-by couple discovered a 7-month-old baby left abandoned in a car seat by the side of a road. They were also to find, scattered nearby, Jasmine Dunbar’s ID among other personal items. This act of abandonment proved to only begin to unravel a sickening tale of betrayal and cold-blooded murder, as Phoenix Police detectives painstakingly worked to reconstruct the horrifying events leading to Dunbar's death.
The investigation unearthed the fact that on the very day Dunbar's child was left by the roadside, Ware was accompanying the young mother to complete a paternity test—something that turned out to never take place. Instead, according to the detailed reconstruction by law enforcement, Ware drove Dunbar to a desolate field, where he mercilessly killed her and set her body aflame in an attempt to obliterate the evidence of his crime.
County Attorney Rachel Mitchell conveyed the enormity of the crime, stating, "This defendant’s callous actions have no place in our community. Thanks to the hard work of my prosecutors, he will live the rest of his life behind bars." Mitchell also took a moment to honor those who rescued the infant, saying, "To the people who rescued this baby, I say ‘thank you.’ This child is alive today because of your heroic actions."
