Man charged with murder at gas station in ‘senseless crime’
On Sunday, Aaron Sieben got a haircut and took his two dogs to Los Altos park. He had made tentative plans to go to his grandmother’s home nearby for a spaghetti dinner with her and his mother, family members told the Journal on Monday.
They never heard from him.
Police say Sieben, 30, was stabbed to death in the middle of Lomas, east of Eubank, after getting into a fight with another man at the Circle K gas station across from the park. Officers found his alleged attacker, Muhammad Ameer, 23, nearby.
Aaron Sieben’s mother, Lisa Sieben, said she last saw her son on Saturday when he was helping her mother — his grandmother — with chores around the house. They had talked about getting together Sunday, but they hadn’t made a firm
plan, so she wasn’t worried when he didn’t show up.
But when he didn’t return from the dog park, Aaron’s girlfriend and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter went to look for him.
“She didn’t think anything of it when she saw the (police car) lights,” Lisa Sieben said. “They had no idea what had happened.”
Now, she said, the family is struggling to figure out how to tell the little girl her father is dead.
Around 7:30 p.m. Sunday, officers were called to the gas station where they found Sieben lying in the road with several people trying to revive him, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. He died at the scene.
Witnesses told detectives they’d seen Sieben sitting in the driver’s side of his gray pickup truck, with a man, later identified as Ameer, outside next to the truck.
They said they watched Sieben get out of his truck, yell for help in chasing Ameer and run after him.
The witnesses followed the chase and saw the two men punching each other on the sidewalk and then in westbound lanes of traffic, according to the complaint. Then they saw Ameer pull out a knife.
They told detectives they saw Sieben raise his hands in the air and try to back away, but Ameer stabbed him two or three times.
After Sieben fell to the ground, Ameer rifled through his pockets, took his wallet, and ran away, according to the complaint. Officers took him into custody nearby.
Ameer is charged with murder and robbery with a deadly weapon, and was booked into the county jail.
“Ameer is from Flint, Mich., and detectives have not determined if Ameer moved here or was passing through,” said Fred Duran, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department.
Annette Sieben, Aaron’s aunt, said her nephew’s girlfriend has to pick up their dogs, Xena and Arnie, from the city shelter. She said the family has no idea why her nephew and Ameer were fighting, and why it ended the way it did.
“We have a lot of unanswered questions,” Annette Sieben said. “We’re distraught he died alone by himself in the street for a senseless crime.”