Friends and family recall victim of June fatal shooting
Family, friends grapple with Trujillo’s death; girlfriend’s father arrested in shooting
Afew seconds of Tom Trujillo’s voice, a succinct greeting, remains on his business phone line. “Tom Trujillo at GardenScapes and Trees.”
George Mares often dials the company’s number to hear those five words from 57-year-old Trujillo, his friend of more than two decades, who was shot to death one night in late June at the home of his girlfriend’s father. The older man, Ben Norverto Martinez, 80, faces charges of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.
But authorities have provided little other information about Trujillo’s death, leaving family members and friends grappling with grief and struggling to understand the loss of a man described as a father, a grandfather, an animal lover who tended to gardens and a karate expert who helped troubled kids.
“He wasn’t the type of person who went looking for trouble,” said Maria Trujillo, 33, Tom Trujillo’s only child. “My dad was a very gentle person.”
Paul Trujillo, Tom Trujillo’s younger brother, said he was “dumbfounded why somebody would shoot him.”
“He made landscaping into what I’d call art from the heart,” said Mares, who had worked with Trujillo. “Tom was an artist. He really was.”
The two had ridden motorcycles
together and took yearly trips to NASCAR races.
“We were like brothers,” Mares said. “Every day, I miss him.”
A criminal complaint filed in the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court accuses Martinez of fatally shooting Trujillo the night of June 30, when the two men had been drinking together at Martinez’s home on Pasada del Ben, just outside Santa Fe city limits.
Martinez’s daughter, Felicia Valencia, had been at the residence earlier in the evening. She told Santa Fe County sheriff ’s deputies she left thinking Trujillo would follow her home. He never showed.
The next morning, family members of Martinez and Valencia found Trujillo’s body lying on a floor of Martinez’s home. According to an affidavit, when relatives asked Martinez what happened to the younger man, he said, “To be honest, I don’t know.”
Martinez was arrested shortly after midnight July 1 and released late July 2 on a $10,000 bond, a GPS monitoring device and an alcohol monitoring device, court records show.
Santa Fe County Sheriff ’s Office spokesman Juan Ríos said earlier this week the agency is continuing to investigate the case, which is pending a grand jury review, and that he could not provide any new information.
Valencia, who could not be reached for comment for this story, told
last month she was certain the shooting was an accident: “When I last saw everybody, they were all happy,” she said.
Her father was a Vietnam veteran, she said, and might have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He wasn’t used to having guests.
“I feel horrible, she said. “I feel really lost.”
Trujillo was born in Las Vegas, N.M., as one of 18 half-siblings with the same mother. He is survived by 13 of those siblings.
He grew up in Pueblo, Colo., with his mother and the two youngest children in the family.
He had his daughter during a marriage that ended in 1986.
He later met the woman he called his life partner, Cindy Madrid Trujillo, and spent nearly three decades with her. She died two years ago.
Valencia said she’d been with Trujillo for about a year and a half before his death. She spoke of his love for animals — they kept a duck, three Chihuahuas, two cats and two turtles, she said.
Paul Trujillo said he and his brother shared a love of fishing, and they spent time together at least once a year.
“I always thought Tom would die a happy old man,” he said.
Tom Trujillo’s daughter also recalled days spent fishing with her father and listening to his mantras that stemmed from his karate training: “You can overcome anything if you have the mind for it.” Such advice has helped guide her over the years, she said.
Trujillo was a fourth-degree black belt in karate and an instructor for all ages at AKKA Karate USA studio in Santa Fe. He had started training in 1995.
Bruce Davis, the head instructor for several AKKA locations in New Mexico and Arizona, said he had watched Trujillo progress from student to teacher, finding a way with troubled youth that mystified Davis.
“Very few people leave positive footprints on this planet,” Davis said. Trujillo was was one of them. “Pretty much everywhere he went, he left good marks.”
Colter Gollihugh, who trained with Trujillo and now operates Santa Fe Dojo, another martial arts studio, said Trujillo “was the kind of teacher who’d let you try things out and make mistakes. He was very patient about it.”
Gollihugh began working for Trujillo’s landscaping company a couple of years ago.
Even with plants and rocks, he said, Trujillo was an “amazing” teacher.
Trujillo’s older brother Frank Romero Garcia recalled a time when he was Trujillo’s teacher. “I pretty much took him under my wing as best as I could,” said Garcia, who first met Trujillo when his brother was 8. The two had been raised in different homes.
Garcia and Trujillo moved to Santa Fe together in 1986. Garcia started a landscaping company a few years later, and Trujillo came on board to learn the business.
When Garcia moved out of town, Trujillo took over and rebranded the company.
Mares said Trujillo built a koi pond two years ago at Rivera Family Funeral Home, a client of his company. When he tends the landscaping there now, Mares said, he is reminded of Trujillo by the trickling stream lined with daisies and yarrow. A sculpture installed at the site will bear Trujillo’s name as a memorial, Mares said.
He was on vacation when Trujillo died. He learned of the death from staff at the funeral home.
“I go, ‘My Tom?’ and they go, ‘Yeah,’ ” Mares said, his voice cracking.
More than anything, he said, he struggles with the way his friend died.
“I still don’t understand why. I hope we get answers real soon.”