ABQ man charged in girlfriend’s shooting death
Police find victim dead in home with gunshot wound to her neck
When police arrived at a rundown house in a tidy neighborhood near San Mateo and Prospect NE on Sunday evening they found a woman lying dead on a mattress in the living room next to a handgun and two shotgun shells.
The woman, Mindy Stuart, 30, had been shot in the neck.
And her boyfriend, 32-year-old Scott Wade Bachicha, was standing over her, covered in blood, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. There was a bloody fist-sized hole in the wall and broken glass on the floor.
It wasn’t the first time police had been called to the house in the 2400 block of Madeira NE.
The couple’s next-door neighbor told the Journal she saw police at their house almost every week and had called 911 herself more than 20 times after hearing Bachicha screaming and yelling.
Mable Herrera said Stuart was very timid around Bachicha and always tried to calm him down and keep him from making a scene as he berated her and their children. She said the couple had three daughters and a baby boy and that she believes the Children, Youth and Families Department had removed the children from their care.
“She was a very nice woman, and
she had three beautiful little girls and another baby afterward,” Herrera said. “It was hurtful to see her with that fear, and not get out of the relationship. I think a lot of us tried — I tried a lot — just to reach her.”
Four police reports and a criminal complaint detail allegations of several incidents of domestic violence dating back to 2011.
In June 2016, Stuart told police Bachicha had pulled her hair and hit her while she was pregnant, according to a police report. Once when neighbors called 911 after hearing a loud quarrel, officers found Bachicha had a handgun tucked into his waistband, according to another police report.
Bachicha was charged with battery on a household member in 2011 after witnesses reported seeing him punch the windshield of her car and try to drag her from it. That case was dismissed because the prosecution was unable to proceed, according to online court records.
Officer Fred Duran, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, did not respond to questions about the number of times police had been called to the home.
On Sunday, police were called to their home for the final time.
When the officers arrived around 6:30 p.m., Bachicha’s friends flagged them down. They said he had told them someone had shot and killed Stuart.
Bachicha told police the same thing. He said he saw a shadowy, dark figure flee the house and saw that his girlfriend had been shot and killed.
Neighbors said that as he sat in a police cruiser, he yelled out the window that someone had shot his wife, and that he loved her.
But after further questioning, he told detectives a different story, according to the complaint.
Through tears, Bachicha told them he had been messing around with a shotgun and it suddenly discharged and struck Stuart in the neck.
“Scott panicked and began to hold Mindy in his arms, but he advised he knew she was already deceased,” a detective wrote in the complaint. “Scott took the shotgun and the spent shotgun shell and exited his residence through his back door.”
He said he threw the gun and shells onto the roof of a nearby building, according to the complaint. It’s unclear where the handgun came from or why it was next to Stuart’s body.
Detectives charged him with murder and booked him into the county jail.
Herrera said she and her husband had planned to take Stuart and Bachicha a plate of food left over from Easter dinner. Instead, she got a call saying their block was a crime scene.
She said she cried throughout the night thinking of Stuart and her daughters and wishing something had been done before she was killed.
“The girls are going to know that their mom is no longer here,” Herrera said. “One of the little girls had said to me once, ‘I wish my dad would stop beating my mom.’ ”