Man accused of attempted murder in bat attack
Police: Suspect beat victim, damaged several motorists’ vehicles on Rodeo Road
A Santa Fe man is in jail facing charges of attempted murder and attempted armed robbery after police say he beat his mother’s boyfriend with a baseball bat, then attacked drivers on Rodeo Road.
Christian Lopez, 24, is charged with 18 criminal counts, including 11 felonies, after the series of events Monday. Police say he appeared to be intoxicated.
According to a criminal complaint, Santa Fe police Officer Javier Vigil was dispatched to a home near Rodeo Road, where a man said he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. While Vigil was en route to the home, 911 operators reported that a man, covered in blood and armed with a pink baseball bat, was smashing vehicles near the intersection of Rodeo and Yucca roads.
Lorraine Valencia, 68, was driving to her home in Pecos on Monday afternoon — her 10-year-old granddaughter in the passenger seat of her white sedan — when she ran into a traffic jam on Rodeo Road. She noticed a man walking up to vehicles on the road in front of her and saw that he was pounding on them with a bat, Valencia said.
“We can’t get out of here,” she told her granddaughter. The man approached her car, she said, and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Then he started pounding on the windshield with the pink bat, Valencia said.
“He was all full of blood. His face was full of blood,” Valencia recalled. “My granddaughter was hysterical.”
She watched as Vigil approached and drew his weapon, she said.
According to court documents, when Vigil got to the scene, he saw Lopez trying to climb into the passenger side of a white truck. He was holding a pink bat covered in blood, Vigil wrote.
Vigil drew his revolver and ordered Lopez to drop the bat, court documents say. Instead, Lopez started walking toward Vigil, the officer wrote.
The standoff ended after Lopez threw the bat on the ground after several commands, Vigil wrote. When another officer arrived, police cuffed Lopez and asked the man why he was covered in blood.
According to police, Lopez said his mother’s boyfriend had hit him with a bat and he took it away. Lopez said he was attacking the vehicles on Rodeo Road because he thought his mother’s boyfriend was inside them and “trying to get him.”
The boyfriend told police a different story.
Police said Lopez moved into the boyfriend’s house a few months ago, and the boyfriend suspected he might be addicted to drugs. On Monday, the boyfriend told police, he told Lopez to get some sleep after noticing the man
had stayed awake through the night.
That’s when Lopez grabbed the bat and came after him, the boyfriend told police.
The man told police that he managed to kick and trip Lopez to get him to stop and Lopez ran out of the house.
The boyfriend went to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center’s emergency room, according to court documents. The documents say he had several injuries to his head, “scratches, bruises and scrapes all over” and a broken left arm.
Police said Lopez damaged at least seven vehicles with the bat. The drivers told police he shattered windshields, broke mirrors and caused more than $7,000 in damage. No drivers were seriously hurt.
As of Wednesday evening, Lopez was being held in the Santa Fe County jail without bond.