Officers kill man in NE Heights
Shooting follows report of attempted carjacking; second person in custody
Albuquerque police officers shot and killed a man in a Northeast Heights neighborhood Friday evening after what police say was an attempted carjacking.
Albuquerque Police Department Chief of Staff John Ross said that around 5:40 p.m. officers responded to reports of the carjacking a few blocks from the shooting, which was just north of Menaul and Morningside.
He said officers located two male suspects, who had entered a different vehicle, and tried to make a high-risk traffic stop.
“The passenger of that vehicle exited the vehicle and confronted the police officers, and the officers discharged their firearms,” Ross told reporters at the scene Friday night.
The man was pronounced
dead at the scene, and his body could be seen lying in the street behind a blue pickup truck near the intersection. He was not identified by police.
Police did not say how many officers fired their weapons or where the man was struck, but Ross said there was a firearm found next to the person killed. He did not know whether the man had fired at police or whether the officers saw the firearm before they shot him.
Ross said the driver of the vehicle was taken into custody and was being questioned by detectives, but he did not say whether the driver was being charged.
“This is in the early stages of investigation,” Ross said.
Menaul was closed between Solano and Sierra — east of Carlisle — just after the shooting while APD detectives investigated. Morningside was closed between Menaul and Phoenix. The areas were still closed around 9 p.m., and Ross said detectives would be on scene for quite a while.
A couple blocks away, Dylan Hoffman was pulling weeds in his yard when he heard five or six gunshots.
“The first reaction I had was grab my son and go into the back and hide behind a wall,” he said.
After Hoffman went back outside, he said he saw officers start to block off the streets near Bel-Air Park on Phoenix.
He said he used to live in Southeast Albuquerque but moved to get away from crime in his neighborhood.
“Seeing (this) made me think maybe I moved into the wrong area,” he said.
A mobile crime lab and community substation arrived on scene around 7 p.m., and a police helicopter noisily circled overhead.
Witnesses at a nearby park said they heard “a lot” of gunshots before police swarmed the area and started stringing up crime scene tape. One man said that shortly after hearing the shots he saw officers handcuff a man and place him into the back of a police cruiser.
A woman who lives across the street told the Journal her car was stolen from her driveway that morning. She said about half an hour before the gunshots rang out, someone was banging on her back door and she called police.
This is the seventh shooting by APD this year and the fourth fatal shooting.
On Oct. 14, APD’s SWAT team shot and killed an armed man after responding to a domestic disturbance in an apartment near Lomas and Wyoming NE. Police have not released any more information.
On Aug. 22, multiple officers shot and killed 57-yearold Roger Schafer at a bus stop in the 400 block of Eubank NE, near Copper. In a news briefing last week, an APD spokesman said three officers fired at least 15 rounds at Schafer after multiple 911 callers reported he was waving a gun at traffic near a bus stop. After he was shot, a BB gun was found in Schafer’s lap.
On July 2, undercover officers conducting a surveillance operation shot and killed 21-year-old Casiano Coronel off East Central. Gilbert Gallegos, an APD spokesman, said no more information will be released on that shooting until after the department deals with federal authorities.