Police question witnesses to NW shooting that left 1 dead

Total homicide count in ABQ so far this year is now 19

Police are talking to witnesses and looking for suspects after they found a man shot to death at a crowded West Side apartment complex Wednesday afternoon, according to a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department.

Officer Simon Drobik said police received a “shots fired” call around 4:30 p.m. at the Russwood apartments in the 4200 block of Atrisco NW, north of Ladera.

He said arriving officers found a man who had been shot at least once and was “beyond help.”

Drobik said a rescue crew tried to resuscitate the man, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

He said nobody is under arrest, but police have at least five witnesses who saw “a lot of things.”

“We are looking for suspects but we need to talk to our witnesses first to get that description,” Drobik said.

Drobik didn’t identify the person killed, say what led to the shooting or give any other details. He said detectives will be out at the complex all night investigating.

Family and friends huddled around Sandra Lucero as she watched her son, 30-year-old Brandon Cruz, ride away from the complex in the back of a police car.

A mutual friend had called Lucero hours before, telling her there was a shooting at Cruz’s apartment.

“When I drove up, I was so frantic because I didn’t know if it was my son or not,” Lucero said.

She said an officer reassured her that Cruz was alive and being held as a witness to the shooting.

Lucero wasn’t given any other details, but said her son’s apartment was broken

into three weeks ago. “Maybe they came back,” she said. Two mobile crime scene labs and several police vehicles sat in the parking lot of the complex as wind gusts rattled the crime scene tape strung throughout the vicinity.

Residents clustered around the outskirts of the yellow tape, some holding each other, crying and visibly shaken.

This shooting brings the homicide count this year to 19. Twelve of those have been shootings and five have ended in arrests.

“These detectives are just running from one homicide to the next,” Drobik said. “We can’t start solving these things until we have good leads, good witnesses.”