Man accused in killing of five declared fit for trial

TAOS — State mental health experts have deemed a man accused of a 2017 fatal shooting spree healthy enough to stand trial, according to the state’s 8th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, and prosecutors can proceed with murder cases against him.

District Attorney Marcus Montoya said Wednesday the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., had released its final report declaring Damian Herrera, 24, of Ojo Caliente competent to be tried in the deaths of five people, including three family members, in a two-county shooting spree June 15, 2017.

Montoya said his prosecutors are now continuing to pursue a first-degree murder case involving a Taos County victim, Michael Alan Kyte of Tres Piedras. Investigators believe Herrera killed Kyte and another man at random after fatally shooting his mother, stepfather and brother at the family home in La Madera, a community in Rio Arriba County.

Charges connected to the fatal shootings of Herrera’s family members and Manuel Serrano, whom Herrera is accused of killing at a gas station in Abiquiú that day, are being prosecuted separately by the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “We found out yesterday from Taos that Damian Herrera was declared competent,” Henry Varela, a spokesman for District Attorney Marco Serna wrote in an email Thursday. “We filed the appropriate paperwork today and are ready to move forward with trial.”

Questions regarding Herrera’s mental health were raised immediately after the shootings by two of his surviving sisters, who said their brother had told them he heard voices. Herrera was sent to the state hospital in Las Vegas after the courts deemed him mentally incapable of standing trial.

Montoya said a trial date has not yet been set in the Taos County case.