One year after killing, family still has no answers
No arrests made, no search warrants executed in relation to shooting death of Matthew Corral
Jessi Corral is filled with memories. She recalls doing a puzzle with her brother, Matthew Corral, at Christmas. She remembers the moment when he introduced her to reggae music. She still feels his excitement when she got engaged.
“He just had a passion for life and looking out for the people around him,” she said. “Always
really wanting the best for the people in his life.”
But as the one-year anniversary of Matthew Corral’s shooting death approaches, the puzzle of an unsolved investigation eats away at his loved ones, who are frustrated by the lack of progress Santa Fe police have made in finding his killer.
“Matt was just not someone who was shot
and killed on the street,” said his mother, Karen Corral. “He had a family that loved him. He was someone’s son, brother, grandson and a good friend to many.”
Matthew Corral, 33, was shot and killed just after midnight July 21, 2019, just blocks from a busy downtown area at the height of tourist season. His assailant remains at large.
“We would like to try and understand why something like this happened — something so unusual, something so violent, to happen right next to downtown in New Mexico and nobody saw it,” his mother said in a recent interview.
There are no suspects, and there have been no search warrants executed, said Santa Fe police Capt. Anthony Tapia , the commander of the department’s investigations unit.
Corral was found face down by two women passing by in an Uber at the intersection of West de Vargas Street and Don Gaspar Avenue on the south side of the Santa Fe River.
While the women initially believed Corral was drunk, they turned him over and saw he was not breathing. They performed CPR in an attempt to revive him, according to police reports. A man told investigators he heard a single gunshot in the area around 12:10 a.m.
Police did not identify a suspect or announce any significant developments in the case in the days after Corral’s body was found.
In 2015, Corral moved from California to New Mexico, where he enjoyed camping, hiking, fishing and skiing.
While he loved the outdoors, he was also a partier and it was not unusual for him to go to downtown bars, his mother said.
“He was loud and obnoxious and he would drink a lot and he liked to party,” Karen Corral said. “That’s why he was downtown.”
On the night of the shooting, the manager at Del Charro bar and restaurant, just blocks away from where Corral’s body was found, said they saw Corral sitting at the bar. According to police reports, he had visited several other bars that night and was believed to have been with friends.
Karen Corral said she heard from the detective assigned to her son’s case, Jacob Parrish, often until October 2019, when he went on leave. A new detective, Blake Byford, was assigned to the case and contacted her in May.
In recent months, police have not received a single tip in the case, Tapia said. Investigators have reviewed all available video surveillance footage from the area, he said.
But Karen Corral said she was disappointed to learn from police that some of the cameras on government buildings in the area where her son was found were not working.
“It is just really hard to be [in California] and not be able to help,” Karen Corral said. “I can’t go to the police department. I think the squeaky wheel helps get more done, and I feel bad we can’t really do that. I don’t know how much more helpful that would be.”
Investigators have ruled out some possibilities that may have led to Corral’s death.
Tapia said a witness removed Corral’s wallet from his pocket to try to find his address because they believed he was intoxicated and had passed out, and police have ruled out robbery as a motive.
“Based on Mr. Corral’s activity during the evening, there is no indication he was targeted,” Tapia said. “But this has not been ruled out.”
Officers recently executed a warrant in the unsolved killing of Aaron Chapman, 37, who was found underneath the Guadalupe Bridge next to De Vargas skate park on Sept. 15. Chapman died of blunt force trauma.
The Corral and Chapman cases are not believed to be connected, Tapia said.
Though both cases remain unsolved, Santa Fe police recently announced a breakthrough in the July 2018 shooting death of Robert Romero. They arrested and charged Joseph Jones, using new DNA technology from the Virginia-based company Parabon
NanoLabs to identify three possible suspects before narrowing it to Jones.
It was the first time Parabon NanoLabs technology was used to identify a murder suspect in New Mexico.
Although police sent items from Corral’s case to the state forensic lab, it did not find any viable DNA that can be used for Parabon testing, Tapia said.
“We need help from the public a lot of times in cases, but we’re also able to solve cases, as we showed in the Robert Romero case,” Tapia said. “We were much farther down that road in this case and we thought outside the box.”
Police will continue to look at new technology and methods that could help them solve Corral’s murder, Tapia said.
“Definitely the first couple of days following an incident are crucial because we have fresh memories, we have people who are involved, witnesses are there, we are able to get a lot more fresh information and move a lot quicker,” Tapia said.
But old-fashioned detective work and community involvement “could really be the thing that could break this case wide open,” Tapia said.
Karen Corral described her son as a spiritual person and an avid practitioner of Kundalini yoga.
A harrowing event at the 2019 Guru Ram Das Puri yoga retreat center for the Summer Solstice Sadhana Celebration in Española demonstrated her son’s spirit of always wanting to help others.
A large tent at the event flipped over, and more than 10 people were injured and taken to local hospitals.
“Everybody was running away and he was running into it, and that’s exactly who he was,” Karen Corral said.
Jessi Corral said she just wants to know investigators have exhausted every resource and that no information or evidence somehow slipped through the cracks.
“I don’t know if it would be harder if they just said, ‘We don’t know, that’s that, we are closing things and we can’t figure it out,’ “Jessi Corral said.