Man waives hearing in pueblo shooting

The 25-year-old Gallina resident accused of killing an Ohkay Owingeh man on Saturday (Jan. 5) after a road rage confrontation at the pueblo waived a preliminary hearing Friday (Jan. 11), according to U.S. District Court documents.

Dennis Velásquez Jr. first appeared in court Thursday in Albuquerque on a federal homicide charge and remains in custody pending a detention hearing set for Monday.

According to charging documents, Velasquez was riding in the back seat of his parents’ SUV on a cigarette run when a confrontation ignited by road rage led him to fatally shoot a

53-year-old man near Ohkay Hotel Casino north of Española on Saturday afternoon.

Velásquez, 25, of Gallina, was arrested Wednesday (Jan.

9). He had his first appearance in the U.S. District Court in Albuquerque on Thursday, when he faced a federal count of homicide in the death of the

53-year-old man. According to a criminal complaint in the case and a statement of probable cause, Velásquez told FBI investigators he was trying to protect his parents from the man and that he only intended to scare him off.

The name of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo man who died has not been released.

Court documents say the man’s 12-year-old son and

10-year-old daughter were in his white pickup, parked alongside the highway, when Velásquez shot him with a rifle near the Ohkay Hotel Casino.

According to the charging documents, the Velásquezes had been driving to the casino to buy cigarettes following a shopping trip to Española to purchase parts to repair a frozen waterline at their home in rural Rio Arriba County.

Dennis Velasquez Jr.’s father was behind the wheel when, a witness told FBI agents, a white pickup cut off the family’s red SUV.

What happened next, the witness said, is that the SUV attempted to hit the pickup and run it off the road. The SUV driver then motioned for the pickup to pull over.

The pickup driver stopped, got out of his vehicle and approached the SUV holding what the witness described as a baton and Velásquez’s father called a sawed-off shotgun, according to the court documents. He was wearing a gold wrap or surgical mask over his face and a hoodie over his head, Velásquez’s father told the FBI.

Velásquez fired his rifle, shooting the man in the face and breaking the SUV’s back passenger window, the documents say. Velásquez didn’t shoot to kill but to frighten the man, he told FBI agents.

After he fired the fatal shot, the documents say, Velásquez repeated to his father several times, “He was going to kill you, Dad.”

Velásquez’s parents told the FBI they fled the scene because they were terrified and didn’t want their son to go to jail.

Another relative told agents the family kept the rifle in the car “for fear of gang and drug dealer activity in Española.”

Saturday’s shooting caused delays on N.M. 68 as police diverted traffic from both northbound and southbound lanes of the highway near the scene.

The shooting came three months after an Alcalde teen was killed in a drive-by shooting on the highway in the same area.

No additional charges had been filed in connection with the case Friday (Jan. 11).