Preston Lord: The Gilbert Goons

Preston Lord was sixteen and lived in San Tan Valley, Arizona. On the night of October 28, 2023, he went to a Halloween party at a house on Via Del Rancho in neighboring Queen Creek. For roughly a year before that, teenagers in the affluent East Valley suburbs had been trading clips of group beatings on Snapchat, credited to a loose crew known online as the Gilbert Goons.

Preston left the party with friends. A group followed him into the street near 194th Street and Via Del Rancho and knocked him down. A 911 call came in at 9:49 p.m., and officers found him in the roadway within three minutes. He never regained consciousness and died of head injuries on October 30. After months of collecting phone video, a grand jury indicted seven defendants in March 2024: Talan Renner, Treston Billey, Taylor Sherman, Jacob Meisner, Dominic Turner, Talyn Vigil and William “Owen” Hines.

Hines pleaded guilty to manslaughter in March 2025 and was sentenced that May to twelve years, with five more for a drunk-driving assault. The other six still face first-degree murder and kidnapping charges. Their cases were severed and the trial date pushed back repeatedly; in September 2026 a judge set Meisner’s trial for that November. Arizona’s governor signed Preston’s Law in May 2025, making group “swarming” attacks a felony.