Man died days after January shootout, records show
Case comes to light with the release of a list of 2016 homicide inquiries
When deputies arrived at a yard near Old Coors and Bridge SW in late January, they found a 24-year-old man seriously injured after he and three others stormed the house armed with assault rifles, handguns and pistols, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.
Deputies took Raul Gloria Torras and another man who had been shot to the hospital, where they both underwent surgery and were expected to survive, according to Sgt. Aaron Williamson, a spokesman for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office at the time.
But Gloria-Torras died a couple of days later, according to the BCSO records custodian.
His death didn’t come to media attention until the office released a list of 2016 homicide investigations to the Journal Monday. BCSO spokeswoman Felicia Romero said she would try to get answers from detectives about the case, including when Gloria-Torras died, if anyone has been arrested and if detectives plan to charge anyone, but she hadn’t done so as of Wednesday evening.
According to the complaint, in the early morning hours of Jan. 31, Gloria-Torras and three other men went to the 3100 block of Rosendo Garcia SW angry at someone who wanted to leave the MC3C gang. Williamson told the Journal in February MC3C is from Mexico and this was the first deputies had seen of them. Romero didn’t have answers about the gang’s presence in Bernalillo County since the shootout.
When the gang arrived, the man who lived in the house and his friend, William Wood, were waiting in the yard and fired a warning shot in the air, according to the complaint.
Wood told deputies he heard someone yell “get out the AK” and Gloria-Torras stormed through the door, so he shot him. Bullets flew while Wood ran upstairs, pushed a woman into a closet to hide and jumped out the second story window. He found his friend’s father had been shot outside.
Gloria-Torras’s friends — Luis Carlos Talamantes, 22, Oscar Valdez, 22, Christian Cabral, 22 — were arrested and charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and other charges. The status of those charges is unclear from online court records but they are no longer in the county jail.
Gloria-Torras’s death is one of 11 homicides BCSO detectives have investigated this year. The list includes three fatal shootings by deputies — including one against a murder suspect — at least one homicide that was determined to be justified and at least two others in which they are still looking for suspects.