Detectives investigating ABQ death

Report of shooting leads to 5th homicide inquiry this year

Dozens of family, friends and neighbors gathered at a Southeast Albuquerque apartment complex Wednesday evening after police say a man died after possibly being shot.

It was the fourth incident investigated by homicide detectives around the city in as many days.

Officer Daren DeAguero, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said officers were dispatched around 4:40 p.m. to the Mountain View Apartments in the 1300 block of Columbia SE, south of the University of New Mexico, after someone called saying a man had possibly been shot in the face.

The man died at the scene, and homicide detectives took over the investigation, DeAguero said. “Currently no one is in custody,” he said. DeAguero didn’t say if there were any suspects or identify the victim, but several people who said they knew him said he was in his late teens or early 20s.

Investigators could be seen moving in and out of an apartment on the second story of a building to the south of the complex’s entrance.

Neighbors and friends of the victim milled around outside the crime tape that blocked off the parking lot directly in front of the apartments as family members huddled together crying, hugging each other and speaking with investigators.

Wednesday’s possible shooting marks the fifth homicide investigation in Albuquerque this year, more than double the number the

city saw by this date last year. Earlier in the day, officers had investigated another fatality when a teenage girl was killed in a car crash that police say was caused by a two suspects in a stolen van.

Last Wednesday, a woman was found dead in the street near Bell and Louisiana SE. On Sunday, a man was shot and killed at the Motel 6 near University and Interstate 40. On Monday, a woman was found dead in Supper Rock Park near Tramway and I-40. And on Tuesday, a man was stabbed to death after a fight in the parking lot of the Circle K at Wyoming and Central.

There were 61 murders in Albuquerque last year, a 20-year high.

JIM THOMPSON/JOURNAL Four teenagers sit on the curb outside a Southeast Albuquerque apartment building where police say a man died after possibly being shot Wednesday evening.