Two men arrested after shots fired from vehicle

Two people were arrested Sunday night after police said shots were fired from a vehicle in central Santa Fe near two city parks, according to a criminal complaint.

Santa Fe residents Joshua Carrasco, 25, and Lyon Rivera, 25, were arrested and booked into the Santa Fe County jail and face criminal charges related to drunken driving and negligent discharge of a firearm, criminal complaints show.

While investigating an armed robbery involving a firearm, Santa Fe police officers Steven Lopez and Brandon Martinez heard gunshots so close that they “could hear the bullets whistling through the air as they passed above me,” Martinez wrote in a criminal complaint filed in Magistrate Court.

Martinez notified dispatch and assisting officers, and shortly afterward, saw a dark SUV heading east down Alamosa Street, crossing Camino Carlos Rey.

“It appeared to me as if the vehicle was fleeing from the scene where I had just heard the gunshots. I immediately got into my fully marked patrol vehicle and began to attempt to locate the vehicle,” Martinez wrote in the complaint.

Martinez located the SUV and placed a driver and passenger under arrest. The officer found a .380-caliber bullet on the driver’s seat, according to the complaint.

A pistol was also found along with two boxes of ammunition. A spent .380 bullet casing was also found on the front windshield wiper, identical to the bullet found on the driver seat, the complaint said.

Carrasco told police he left his house and wasn’t involved in any shooting. But he eventually “admitted after leaving his residence on Santa Clara Drive, [he] and Mr. Rivera both began shooting a handgun out the vehicle’s window and into the air,” the criminal complaint stated. “Mr. Carrasco did not remember how many times he had shot and how many times Mr. Carrasco had shot.”