‘Leader’ in fatal shooting gets 16 years
18-year-old drive-by victim was sitting in her boyfriend’s car
Finding he was the leader of the group responsible for a fatal South Valley drive-by shooting in May 2016, an Albuquerque judge on Tuesday sentenced 23-year-old Patrick Zamora to 16 years in prison.
Zamora will serve that sentence consecutively to the eight-year federal sentence he is already serving for a drug distribution conviction.
According to prosecutor Timothy Trembley, Zamora drove a group of friends, two of whom were 15 at the time, to a home on Atrisco SW, near Arenal, after gathering guns.
“We’re not 100 percent clear what the plan was going into it,” Trembley said, “whether they were going to go rob somebody for drugs, have a drug deal that they were just protection for, or if they intended this from the very beginning, but they certainly armed themselves from the very beginning.”
At some point, at least three people fired from Zamora’s vehicle, killing 18-year-old
Aliyah Garcia, who had been sitting in her boyfriend’s car, which was parked nearby.
“They had no intention of killing anybody or shooting anybody,” said Zamora’s attorney Nicole Moss. “The intention was just to be stupid, basically. Stupid kids with guns. They shouldn’t have had the guns.”
She said Zamora believed the group was going to drive down the street and shoot to scare someone.
“It doesn’t change the fact now that Ms. Garcia is dead, and that precious life can never be given back to her family, it can never be given back to the community,” Moss said. “And he recognizes that and it’s something he’s going to struggle with for the rest of his life.”
Moss told the court her client has been surrounded by substance abuse and violence his entire life and at age 3 saw his grandfather being murdered.
Zamora apologized to Garcia’s family and his own family, and said he knows what he did was wrong.
“I have learned my lesson,” he said. “The life that I lived, I’m done with. I’m gonna be a better person when I get out.”
State District Judge Briana Zamora handed down the maximum sentence, saying she believes the defendant had been the leader that day and that he’d provided guns to teens.
“You were the one who handed two other minors, that very same day, firearms and told them to shoot. Not a good influence for two children in the back of your car,” she said.
Zamora was one of five people charged in the case. Marisa Sepulveda pleaded no contest to conspiracy and was sentenced in April to 12 years, and Joseph Sanchez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy, and was sentenced in March to 16 years. Cisco Alires, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit armed robbery, is set for sentencing in November. His brother, Carlos, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and conspiracy, and faces up to 15 years in prison.