Murder trial starts in car burglar case
Vet accused of running down man who tried to rob him
Ivory Lynch had been at a comedy show in Downtown Albuquerque late on a Friday night when he walked to his SUV to get a few dollars for cigarettes.
“Little does he know that Ronnie Fernandez … is already at his car,” said Lynch’s defense attorney Louren Oliveros. “He’s in the midst of a crime — a felony. And let me tell you something about Fernandez, he’s on a really bad road, this man.”
In her opening statement Tuesday, Oliveros asked jurors to acquit her client of the second-degree murder charge he’s facing for killing Fernandez minutes later. His trial before state District Judge Benjamin Chavez could stretch into next week.
Lynch kept a loaded handgun in his vehicle, and as he confronted Fernandez and checked to see if the firearm was missing, he heard a click.
“And he knows what that is,” Olive-
ros said. “It’s someone trying to fire his gun.”
Fernandez pointed and attempted to shoot Lynch’s gun a second time moments later, Oliveros said, and Lynch hopped in his SUV, and hit and killed Fernandez. She said Lynch, a father of six, did not intend to kill the man, but he intended to stop him from doing anything else.
“It triggers in him the training, the combat training that he has as an Army vet, combat training that taught him that you must go forward,” she said, “you have a duty to go forward and make sure … to protect your firearm, to protect yourself and to protect others.”
Prosecutor Neal Speer said Lynch, who had used marijuana and had a couple of drinks that night, “didn’t let it go” even after Fernandez retreated.
“Ivory repeatedly did the wrong thing, and he continued to do that after the immediacy of any danger is over,” Speer said.
He did not immediately call 911, seek help from anyone or attempt to de-escalate the situation, Speer said. Lynch knew the gun he kept in the vehicle didn’t work properly and often wouldn’t fire, and Speer made it clear to jurors that Lynch was “the only witness that we have.”
“Ivory took a bad situation and he made it worse,” Speer said. “In fact, he made it much worse. I suspect that all of you have heard the phrase two wrongs don’t make a right.”
He left the parking lot after the confrontation, and saw Fernandez cross a street and walk into an alley before hitting him and then crashing, Speer said.
“He was so out of control, he slammed into a building,” Speer said. “He hit Ronnie so hard that Ronnie flew down that alleyway — his own words.”