Trial to begin in 2018 fatal shooting
Santa Fe teen accused of killing Michigan man
The trial for a Santa Fe teenager charged with second-degree murder in connection with the 2018 fatal shooting of a Michigan man is scheduled to begin Monday.
Zachary Gutierrez is accused of killing Richard Milan, 64, who police say had stopped in Santa Fe with his wife during a cross-country trip and was walking his dog near the intersection of Airport Road and Lucia Lane on the evening of Sept. 26, 2018, when he encountered a group of teens, exchanged words with Gutierrez and was shot twice and died.
Police said at the time Gutierrez — who has an extensive history of encounters with law enforcement — was believed to have started the altercation with Milan and stood over his body laughing after shooting him.
But Gutierrez’s attorneys have said the case is far from open and shut, claiming another young man — a Mexican national charged in U.S. District Court with unlawful possession of a firearm — may be responsible for Milan’s death.
Lawyers Stephen Aarons and Hugh Dangler have said evidence has come to light since the shooting that indicates it may have been Jesus Arrieta-Perez who shot Milan.
“A lot of evidence [suggests] he [Gutierrez] is not the shooter, that Mr. Arrieta was,” Aarons said at a previous hearing in the case.
Aarons said two of the three girls in a group of five teens who allegedly witnessed the shooting later exchanged text messages saying it “wasn’t fair” Gutierrez, now 19, had been charged.
Arrieta-Perez initially said he didn’t see who shot Milan, according to Aarons. But after being arrested on a weapons charge
and questioned by federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, Arrieta-Perez claimed Gutierrez was the shooter.
Pretrial filings in the case indicate getting witnesses to testify at trial about who shot Milan has been an issue.
The court issued an arrest warrant for one female eyewitness for the defense last month, but it wasn’t clear Friday why that was necessary and whether the witness had been arrested.
Gutierrez’s attorneys filed a motion seeking to have statements she made on camera to police admitted if she was not located before trial, and according to a judge’s Feb. 22 order granting the motion, she still had not been.
“[The witness] was apparently standing near the shooter and has not made any inconsistent statements as to what happened,” state District Judge T. Glenn Ellington wrote in an order granting the motion.
Gutierrez’s defense team also filed a motion in February seeking to admit video taken from the body camera of a police officer showing an interview with a man who now can’t be found.
“Despite being the only impartial witness at the scene, who gave a detailed description of the shooter, no police officer or detective ever attempted to interview him again,” according to the motion.
The witness told the officer he had stepped out of a nearby church service to smoke that night and ran to the scene after he heard three shots fired, according to the motion.
The man said he saw five young people, the motion says, and four of them ran away, leaving one young man standing over Milan’s body shouting something.
The man’s description of the person who didn’t run — as someone with a heavy physique and “uncombed, grizzly hair” wearing tan shorts and a black top — bears more similarity to Arietta-Perez than to Gutierrez, according to the motion.
“The jury needs to hear what a disinterested eyewitness, unaffiliated with either side saw,” the defense attorneys wrote in the motion.
Jury selection is slated to begin Monday, and testimony is set to start Tuesday.
The trial is expected to last through the week.