Is this the start of something truly awful?

Authorities say a Phoenix man was arrested Thursday for the fatal shooting of his neighbor.

Phoenix Police Department spokesman Tommy Thompson said 50-year-old Gary Thomas Kelley was booked into the Maricopa County Jail on Thursday night and was charged with one count of murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

Officers were called to the scene of a shooting near 7th and Southern avenues around 1 p.m. and found 44-year-old Juan Varela wounded. He was transported to a local hospital, where he died.

According to Thompson, Kelley and Varela lived two houses apart for a number of years but have gotten into altercations during the past several years.

They reportedly quarreled again Thursday, during which Kelley used racial slurs towards Varela. A neighbor tells ABC15 he heard a man yelling racial slurs and asking the victim if he wanted to die. As the argument went on, Varela's brother Antonio walked over to the men and also exchanged words with Kelley.

Thompson said Juan Varela tried kicking Kelley, at which point he pulled out a gun and shot the victim on the sidewalk. Officers arrested Kelley at his home, where it appeared he had been drinking and was intoxicated.

Thompson said a search of the house turned up a gun believed to have been used in the fatal shooting.

Neighbors tell ABC15 they fear the shooting may have been the result of the debate over Arizona's new illegal immigration bill. A niece of the victim told ABC15 her uncle was born and raised in the U.S.

This might not be about anything related to SB 1070, but why would the neighbors make up the immigration law angle?

Until we get more information we won't speculate, but the fact that people could be blaming murder on the xenophobic immigration bill crafted by the admitted voter caging jerk Kris Kobach is just the beginning.

... Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas GOP, sent out a self-congratulatory litany of accomplishments. Among them was one particularly eye-catching item:

"To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!" [...]