Autopsy: Woman shot by BCSO at least 21 times
Lawyer says ‘they shot her to pieces’
Elisha Lucero, the 28-year-old woman who was killed by three Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies during a misdemeanor battery call over the summer, was shot at least 21 times, according to a recently released autopsy report.
“Injuries include damage of the spinal cord, of the neck, the lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidney, fractures of the long bones of the left arm and leg, and an amputation of part of a finger,” the medical investigator wrote in the report.
The report states Lucero’s body had gunshot wounds from an indeterminate range of fire, had four graze wounds and “21 separate wound tracks.” It provides details about 17 gunshot wounds to her head, shoulder, chest and abdomen, most of which traveled left to right.
“Obviously they shot her to pieces,” said Shannon Kennedy, an attorney for Lucero’s family. “It just doesn’t make sense. We’re going to do an in-depth investigation. We’ve been hired to do as such but what happened to that woman is kind of unimaginable.”
Kennedy said her firm is doing its own investigation, filing public records requests and gathering information about what happened on the July 22 night when Lucero was killed.
A spokeswoman for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said she could not comment on the autopsy report because the investigation is ongoing.
Sheriff Manuel Gonzales has previously said deputies were called to Lucero’s RV — parked in front of her family’s home southwest of Rio Bravo and Broadway — because her cousin called 911 to say she had hit their uncle.
He said deputies had tried to get Lucero to come out of the RV and were just about to leave and issue a summons instead when she came running out, screaming and waving a kitchen knife.
Lt. Alfonso Rodriguez and deputies Jonathan Aguilar and Ryan Schmidt opened fire, killing Lucero.