Mother of Alex Franco speaks publicly for first time since son's killing

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Alex Franco's mother spoke out after his 2024 shooting death during a robbery.
She expressed grief and frustration over the justice system.
The shooter, a minor, received a juvenile detention sentence until age 25.

TAYLORSVILLE — For the first time since her son was shot and killed during what investigators described as a robbery gone wrong, the mother of Alex Franco sat down exclusively with KSL to share her grief, her frustration and her message for the teens involved.

Franco, 21, was first reported missing on St. Patrick's Day in 2024. Prosecutors say he had met up with three teenagers when one of them shot him. Two days later, investigators found his body in the desert west of Eagle Mountain with a single fatal gunshot wound.

"He would light up the entire room," his mother, Marci Kilpatrick, said, her voice somber as she remembered her oldest child. "Alex was my oldest, my firstborn. My first love."

Kilpatrick said reliving the events of 2024 — and the court hearings that followed — has been "brutal."

"It was a horrible, horrible process," she said. "To say that justice was served in this case? Not even close."

Of the three teens involved, one was sentenced to prison and another to probation. The shooter, who was 15 at the time, accepted a plea deal that allows him to remain in juvenile detention until he turns 25. KSL is not naming him because he was a minor at the time of the crime.

Police say Alex Franco, 21, was kidnapped from his Kearns neighborhood near 3800 West and 5700 South and later found dead. Family and friends mourned their loss at a vigil in his honor, where they brought photos of Franco, including this one. (Photo: Family photo)

"As a mother, this is unbearable," Kilpatrick said. "I can hardly breathe. I can hardly get up."

Despite her pain, Kilpatrick said she does not hate the teens involved — including the one who killed her son.

"All the kids, including Alex, made very bad decisions that day that affected a lot of lives," she said. "But most importantly, Alex's."

Kilpatrick said she is working toward forgiveness, something she believes her son would want.

"I do forgive them," she said. "I hope that they can get the help that they need because I know that Alex didn't want me to hold hate in my heart."

Still, the loss remains overwhelming.

"Alex was my pride and joy and the love of my entire life — my hope, my faith, everything," she said.

A judge in the shooter's case said he imposed the harshest sentence allowed under Utah's juvenile court system.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.