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You could chalk up some of border militiaman Todd Hezlitt’s troubles to bad luck - who knew when he associated with Shawna Forde in 2008 that she would end up killing people the next year and drag his name into the mud?

But his most recent trouble - deputies say the 38-year-old Hezlitt ran away with a 15-year-old girlfriend - seems to be of his own doing.

Hezlitt was arrested in April and accused of two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, a student in the Flowing Wells Unified School District. Then on June 1, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department reported that Hezlitt and the girl had both disappeared, apparently together.

He’s facing felony charges of sexual conduct with a minor and has violated the terms of his release from jail by contacting the girl, causing an arrest warrant to be issued, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Sgt. Dawn Barkman said.

It’s Hezlitt’s latest passage under a spotlight that has repeatedly shown the flaws in a man who made his name in Southern Arizona as an ex-Marine patrolling areas south of Three Points for drug smugglers. Even doing that, he got mixed up with murderers and for a while was falsely rumored to have been involved in a fatal home invasion in Arivaca.

[…]

[While in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department academy], Hezlitt was already involved in the activity that would absorb much of his time in coming years - going out on independent, armed patrols of the borderlands, trying to detect smugglers, spending years in teams of off-duty or former military members that Adams organized. That activity brought Hezlitt, a 5-foot 3-inch livewire, into contact with border-militia leader Shawna Forde - and it got him in trouble.

In fall 2008, Hezlitt and Forde both appeared in a news story on Norwegian TV about Americans who were patrolling the borderlands on their own. When Forde and two others were arrested in June 2009 and later convicted of the home-invasion murders of an Arivaca man and his 9-year-old daughter, that appearance led some to believe Hezlitt was involved in Forde’s group, Minutemen American Defense, or even the murders. [Emphasis added.]

[…]

If you’re hanging around with Shawna Forde and patrolling the US-Mexican border with weapons, that’s not bad luck. That’s maliciousness, stupidity, or both. So is running away with a 15 year old.

I didn’t remember that Shawna Forde went on Norwegian TV. It didn’t seem significant in 2010 when I was following Forde’s murder trial… but it sure does now. Maybe that’s why ‘Fjordman’ [Peder Jensen] thought Mexico was going to take over the US. He was listening to Arizona racists.

Todd Russell Hezlitt ARIZONA DAILY STAR FILE