Suspect charged in SW ABQ homicide
Police say evidence did not match account of the victim’s death
Detectives arrested a suspect accused of fatally shooting a man at a Southwest Albuquerque home late last month before fleeing. When Francis Fair was later questioned, he told officers Roberto Herrera accidentally shot himself.
But police said the evidence didn’t match that story.
Now, the 30-year-old is charged with an open count of murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm in the Sept. 20 death of Herrera, who was 27. He was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center Tuesday.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, officers responded to a shooting around 10:30 p.m. in the 10800 block of Cenote SW, near 118th and Dennis Chavez. Fair’s sister told a police dispatcher that her brother had shot Herrera “on accident” and fled the house, yelling he was “going to jail forever.”
Police say they found Herrera’s body in a bedroom with a gunshot wound to his head. A handgun lay several feet away.
Fair returned to the scene and told detectives Herrera had been “playing with” Fair’s gun before putting it to his own head. Fair said that when he tried to grab the gun, “it went off.”
Then, according to police, Fair changed his story, saying Herrera had pulled the trigger on his own and he fled because, as a convicted felon with a handgun, he “was going to go to jail forever.”
However, findings from the Office of the Medical Investigator contradict Fair’s account.
Police say the autopsy found that the “tattooing,” or burn marks, of the gun barrel on Herrera’s head were not consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Also, investigators said the blood spatter on Herrera’s arms suggests he was not holding the gun to his own head.
Herrera’s girlfriend called detectives and told them she was concerned Fair “was going to get away with murder,” and that he would regularly threaten Herrera and put a gun to his head. The girlfriend said Herrera owed Fair drug money and, on Sept. 4, Herrera had called her to pick him up when Fair put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him.