Category: Violence – Homicide Battery

  • Plea deal accepted in death of Victoria Martens

    ELISE KAPLAN / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

    Copyright © 2019 Albuquerque Journal reprinted with permission

    Jessica Kelley will not be going to trial in the brutal slaying of Victoria Martens.

    In a nearly empty courtroom Monday – watched only by the media, a couple of investigators and Victoria’s crying grandparents – 34-year-old Kelley pleaded no contest to child abuse recklessly caused resulting in death, tampering with evidence and aggravated assault.

    The plea was accepted by Judge Charles Brown.

    She faces a total of 50 years in prison. Since she has two prior felony convictions, she will be sentenced as a habitual offender, which adds 20 years in prison to the sentence.

    But Kelley has the possibility of cutting her time in prison down to 20 years total with good behavior.

    The plea agreement is similar to one Brown rejected last September.

    Although the District Attorney’s Office and Kelley’s defense attorneys had agreed to that deal at the time, Judge Brown said they had not presented enough evidence that Kelley was guilty of child abuse.

    At a news conference after the plea hearing, District Attorney Raúl Torrez said the primary difference this time is that Kelley is pleading “no contest” – or saying while she is not admitting guilt, she is not contesting the state’s narrative.

    “We were able to fashion an agreement that substantially exposes Ms. Kelley to the same amount of time in the Department of Corrections and satisfies the concerns of the court,” Torrez said. “It also brings some finality at least to the second of the three suspects that are charged with the death of Victoria Martens.”

    Kelley is the second suspect to take a plea deal in the case.

    Victoria’s mother, Michelle Martens, pleaded guilty to child abuse recklessly caused resulting in death over the summer, and she faces between 12 and 15 years in prison.

    Martens’ boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, is charged with child abuse resulting in death and tampering with evidence. His trial has been delayed pending a ruling by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

    His attorney, Steve Aarons, said his client is innocent and will not take a plea deal.

    “We are disappointed that the prosecution settled for a child abuse conviction against Jessica Kelley for her brutal murder and dismemberment of Victoria Martens,” Aarons wrote in an email. “On the other hand, by pleading and agreeing to testify as the prosecution’s star witness, Kelley will be subject to cross examination at our trial.”

    Although police initially said Gonzales and Kelley stabbed and strangled Victoria while Martens watched, prosecutors now say an unidentified man was retaliating against Gonzales when he went to Martens’ apartment and killed her daughter.

    They say that man’s partial DNA sample was left on the little girl’s body and he has been indicted as a “John Doe.”

    Torrez said he hopes the plea deal his office struck with Kelley will strengthen the case against Gonzales and will help identify and prosecute John Doe.

    No sexual assault

    Less than 24 hours after the August 2016 morning when 10-year-old Victoria’s body was found mutilated and on fire in the bathtub of her mother’s Northwest Albuquerque apartment, detectives arrested Martens, Gonzales and Gonzales’ cousin, Kelley.

    They were all charged with murder, child abuse and other charges, and Gonzales and Kelley were charged with raping the little girl.

    On Monday, Mark Earnest, Kelley’s defense attorney, announced that over the past two months experts have determined that contrary to the findings in the initial autopsy report, there was not any evidence that Victoria was raped the night she was killed.

    “In totality these three experts that I’m talking about have over 100 years (of experience) …” he said. “They determined that no sexual assault took place. Despite that, early on, the autopsy report in this case indicated that there was sexual assault.”

    Last Friday, the DA’s Office filed charges dismissing rape charges against Kelley, saying there was “not sufficient evidence to connect Jessica Kelley to the charge of criminal sexual penetration.”

    Earnest said he wishes those charges had been dismissed earlier in order to correct the public’s misconceptions about the case.

    “Part of the pretrial publicity in this case, adding to the horrific nature (and it was a horrific crime), was this added element that Victoria had been raped and sexually assaulted, and she wasn’t,” Earnest said. “That the state did not concede until a few days before the trial in this case.”

    “This case was reviewed by seven additional experts, including forensic pathologists, a child sexual abuse expert, and an expert in the changes in genital tissues from sexually transmitted viruses before the autopsy report was finalized,” Sanchez wrote in the statement. “We strongly refute any claims he was unqualified to handle this case.”

    She said officials will be reviewing the independent findings along with OMI’s autopsy report.

    Torrez said this case has illustrated that all the major players in the criminal justice system “can do a much better job.”

    “We do our very best to be professionals,” he said. “To examine the evidence, to look at every angle of the case, to work with law enforcement partners, our partners at the Office of the Medical Investigator and to examine specific cases, but also to learn important lessons for the future.”

    Not a perfect outcome

    Kelley was “tweaking” and experiencing paranoid delusions from methamphetamine the afternoon she agreed to baby sit Victoria while Martens and Gonzales went out, according to the factual basis included with the plea agreement.

    She should have realized she was too intoxicated and impaired to care for a child. When an unknown man arrived at the apartment, asked for Gonzales and went to Victoria’s room, she should have tried to stop him.

    “The man strangled Victoria to the point of death or to the point of causing great bodily harm,” the statement reads. “Evidence would support a reasonable inference that Kelley knew or should have known that the man posed a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm to Victoria.”

    After the man left, Kelley carried Victoria’s body down the stairs, but was interrupted by Martens’ and Gonzales’ return.

    Kelley told Gonzales that Victoria had been killed and the two cousins “agreed to conceal the crime and dispose of Victoria’s body and to hide the murder from Martens by keeping her way from Victoria’s room.”

    After cleaning up the room, Kelley grabbed a clothes iron and struck Martens on the face with it. This is the basis for the aggravated assault charge. There was a struggle between all three suspects and “a short time later, Martens and Gonzales left apartment 808. Kelley then set Victoria’s body on fire and took down two smoke detectors in the apartment.”

    Torrez, flanked by his two lead prosecutors and Art Gonzales, the deputy chief of investigations at Albuquerque Police Department, said the two detectives who had been assisting with the investigation will continue to do so. Art Gonzales did not comment at the news conference, and in response to request for an interview, an APD spokesman merely said, “Today’s plea agreement is a step toward accountability for this heinous crime.”

    Torrez said he did not make the decision to enter a plea deal lightly and he recognizes it’s not the perfect outcome.

    “It is not something that is ideal in terms of what we all would like to see happen in these cases,” he said. “However we are confronted as prosecutors with our ability to present cases based on the facts and the evidence that we have. We, as you know, identified some issues with the initial investigation which altered the course of our prosecution and had to inform our decision to enter into this plea agreement.”

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  • Jessica Kelley pleads no contest to child abuse in Martens case

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One day before the first trial in the Victoria Martens case was scheduled to begin, the defendant, 34-year-old Jessica Kelley pleaded no contest to child abuse recklessly caused, resulting in death, tampering with evidence and aggravated assault.

    She faces 50 years in prison, with the possibility to get out in a little over 20 years for good behavior.

    Kelley is the second defendant in the high profile case to plead in the case.

    Victoria’s mother, Michelle Martens, pleaded guilty to child abuse resulting in death over the summer. She faces between 12 and 15 years in prison with the opportunity for that to be cut in half for good behavior.

    In August 2016, Victoria was discovered dead in her mother’s Northwest Albuquerque apartment. She had been strangled, stabbed and dismembered and her body was on fire.

    Albuquerque Police Department detectives arrested Martens, Martens’s boyfriend Fabian Gonzales and Gonzales’s cousin Kelley and charged them with murder, child abuse, rape and tampering with evidence. However, in late June, District Attorney Raul Torrez announced much of what was known about the case is “simply not true.”

    The most serious charges against Gonzales were dismissed. His trial, which was supposed to begin in October has been delayed pending a decision by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.

    Copyright (c) Albuquerque Journal 2018
    Reprinted with Permission
  • He believed every car was out to kill him

    By Sami Edge | sedge@sfnewmexican.com

    Maybe it was about a trip to Colorado gone sour. Maybe it was deeper than that.

    Whatever the case, Mark Hice and Lucas “Louie” Martinez were feuding. And the disagreement between the two Española men escalated into death threats, gunfire on a highway and, ultimately, the fatal shooting of an innocent teen.

    Recorded interviews by police and other police documents tell the story of how the bad blood between Hice and Lucas Martinez led to the death of 18-year-old Cameron Martinez of Alcalde on the northbound stretch of N.M. 68 near Ohkay Hotel Casino on the evening of Oct. 4.

    Hice and two of his friends are accused of shooting into a blue Subaru that they believed Lucas Martinez or his friends were in. But inside the car were Cameron Martinez and three of his friends, who had nothing to do with the dispute between Hice and Lucas Martinez.

    Cameron Martinez, a recent graduate of Española Valley High School and an intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory, died from a gunshot to the head. His friends were shot as well and survived.

    Hice, 22, sobbed when New Mexico State Police interviewed him after the shooting, according to an audio recording.

    “I’m sorry,” Hice said, breaking down during an interview. “I just keep seeing the kid’s face.”

    Hice and the other alleged shooters — Anton Martinez, 19, of Santa Cruz, and Axel Zamarron, 17, of Española — are each charged with first-degree murder. Brittany Garcia, 21, of Ojo Caliente, who police say was driving the car in which Hice rode, also faces a murder charge. Three other females — ages 23, 17 and 16 at the time of the shooting — face lesser charges.

    The bad blood

    It isn’t clear from police documents when Hice and Lucas Martinez, 19, of Española, first crossed paths or when their relationship began to go south.

    But Christopher Hice, a brother of Mark Hice, and Michelle Mascareñas, Mark Hice’s mother, told authorities the relationship soured after Mark Hice and Lucas Martinez had gone to Colorado to pick up marijuana.

    Sometime during the trip, Lucas Martinez ditched Hice, forcing him to hitchhike home, Mascareñas told police.

    Christopher Hice told police his brother was angry when he returned to New Mexico and went to Lucas Martinez’s house to fight him. In the altercation, Christopher Hice said, Lucas Martinez threatened to shoot Mark Hice and bury him in the backyard of Lucas Martinez’s home, known as the “Trap.”

    Mark Hice also told his brother that Lucas Martinez had threatened to put a hit on him.

    In a recorded interview, a state police officer questioned that story.

    “Do you think it was a drug debt or anything?” the officer asked Christopher Hice. “You think he might have ripped him off or something?”

    “I don’t know. Usually, he tells me the truth,” Christopher Hice said of his brother. “But honestly, like, he’s been doing bad things and I don’t know if he was trying to cover it up saying he was going to Colorado for some weed.”

    Mark Hice told police that Lucas Martinez and his friends sent him death threats and said they would kick down his door and “shoot me in my face.” They also threatened his children, ages 4 and 5, Hice said.

    State police recovered social media photos that appear to show friends of Lucas Martinez mocking Hice while holding guns.

    The shooting

    Mark Hice told police that he hadn’t heard from Lucas Martinez in the few days leading up to the shooting. But on that day, a Thursday, as he and girlfriend Garcia were driving around Española in a black Dodge Charger, they saw Lucas Martinez’s friends tailing them in a black Cadillac Escalade.

    The Cadillac followed Hice and Garcia northbound on N.M. 68, police reports say.

    Around 4 p.m., an Alcalde woman reported the two cars to state police. The caller’s family was driving northbound, she told a dispatcher, when they ended up between the Charger and the Escalade near the Ohkay Hotel Casino. She saw a man reach out of the Charger with a black handgun and fire three shots “in the direction of her and her family” and the Escalade behind them.

    Hice told police that occupants of the Cadillac shot first, so he fired backed as a warning.

    “I got scared, so I reached out the window with it and popped three shots toward the ground,” he said. “I fired off just warning shots, just to get them away from us.”

    Officers didn’t find the cars involved.

    After that afternoon shooting, Hice’s mother told police, her son was “paranoid because he believed every car was out to kill him,” reports say.

    Police reports say Hice and Garcia switched cars in Ojo Caliente in the late afternoon of Oct. 4 before heading back to Española.

    Hice bought ammunition, he told police. Then he met up with friends, drank liquor and distributed guns to a few of them: a Colt 1911 for Anton Martinez, a Glock .45 for Zamarron and a Mac-11 for himself.

    The three and their friends started to drive again in two cars and headed north on N.M. 68 when, apparently, they got spooked. They thought Lucas Martinez or his friends were on to them.

    Hice told police the blue Subaru pulled up behind the cars he and his friends were in, driving aggressively, before it started to pass in the left lane.

    “I got scared and thought it was them [Lucas Martinez or friends] because I saw one of their windows down,” Hice told police. “That’s when I thought it was them so all of us, it just, you know, we were in that thing, and we wanted to defend ourselves.”

    Hice told police that Zamarron, who was in the car in front of Hice, started firing first. Then his car joined in.

    Hice said he fired nine rounds. He said Zamarron emptied a full clip and that Anton Martinez shot once.

    Zamarron remembers things slightly differently. He told police that as the Subaru was passing, he heard shots. Thinking his friend had just been shot at, police reports say, Zamarron leaned out the window of the car and started shooting.

    But he told police he didn’t fire a full clip or hit Cameron Martinez with any of his bullets.

    “I aimed toward the floor,” he told police, according to their written reports.

    Not long after the shooting, a state police officer pulled over to help the occupants of the Subaru, which had stopped in the median on N.M. 68. He found Cameron Martinez dead and the three occupants others shot.

    The arrests

    In the days after the shooting, Hice and Garcia turned themselves in to state police. Police searched two homes for Anton Martinez before he turned himself in. Zamarron surrendered after police surrounded his home Oct. 7.

    Zamarron told police he’d never hung out with Hice before the night of Oct. 4. Zamarron had decided to be friends with Hice because Hice did not like the people charged with shooting and killing Nicholas Kaye, Zamarron’s best friend, during a shootout at an Española gas station in June.

    Police documents say Hice had been living with Anton Martinez prior to the shooting. Hice’s mother told police that Martinez had “lured Mark into the ‘gangster life’ and had Mark selling cocaine with him.”

    According to police interview recordings, Anton Martinez told police he was innocent but wouldn’t answer questions without a lawyer.

    In an email Friday, Anton Martinez’s defense lawyer, Stephen Aarons, said Hice “has apologized in the jail for his police statements” and that Hice’s family “is just hoping to avoid some of the consequences for the shooting.”

    Aarons said Anton Martinez’s defense in court will be that he only fired one round after the group had passed Cameron Martinez’s car because “he didn’t want Hice or the girls to think he was afraid or not ‘part of it.’ ”

    Lawyers for Hice and Lucas Martinez did not return calls for comment.

    Anton Martinez, Hice, Zamarron and Garcia are being held in jail without bond as the cases against them wind through state District Court.

    Hice’s past

    In addition to first-degree murder, Hice faces charges of shooting at or from a motor vehicle, conspiracy and tampering with evidence in the death of Cameron Martinez.

    It isn’t his first trouble with the law.

    In 2015, court records show, Hice was charged with false imprisonment and battery against a household member when his girlfriend told police that Hice trapped her inside an apartment and shoved her away from the door.

    Police found the woman with a red mark on her chest, court records show. Hice told police he was arguing with the woman and got angry when she told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore. Charges in that case were dropped.

    Hice was also charged with driving under the influence of marijuana and possessing drug paraphernalia in 2017, but those charges were dropped as well.

    Lucas Martinez is not facing charges related to any of the shootings on N.M. 68 on Oct. 4. But he still has legal troubles.

    Lucas Martinez faces charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in the shooting of an Española woman in October. He also faces charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor after two boys reported getting shot accidentally while hanging out with Lucas Martinez and friends, drinking alcohol and handling guns in November.

    One of the boys told police that Lucas Martinez “is known for carrying and distributing illegal narcotics” from his home.

    The District Attorney’s Office has asked a judge to hold Lucas Martinez in jail pending his trial, arguing he is a danger to the community.

    Lucas Martinez was charged in August with a felony for allegedly possessing a stolen firearm, but the case was dismissed, documents show.

    Copyright 2018 Santa Fe New Mexican | Reprinted with Permission

     

  • Woman held in infant death granted release in Santa Fe

    (c) 2018 Santa Fe New Mexican Republished with Permission
    Woman held in infant death granted release

    Rachel Smith sits with attorneys during a hearing in District Court on Tuesday. Smith was being held in the death of 3-month-old she was baby-sitting. PHAEDRA HEYWOOD | THE NEW MEXICAN

    Rachel Smith, 27, had been in jail since her March 2017 arrest in connection with the death of the baby boy at a Cerrillos Road motel.

    The infant’s mother — then 17 years-old — had left two children with Smith for five days preceding the death, according to court records, and Smith was living with the children in the Thunderbird Motel when she woke up one morning to find the baby was not breathing.

    Investigators originally speculated that Smith — a heroin addict who admitted shooting up in the bathroom while she was watching the boy and his 2 year-old sister — might have rolled over on the boy. However, an autopsy later revealed the infant had bleeding in his brain consistent with “blunt force trauma.”

    Smith’s defense attorney, Stephen Aarons, filed a motion in November seeking to have the charges dismissed on grounds that her rights to a speedy trial and discovery of evidence had been violated. Among other things, he argued that it took prosecutors about a year to produce Children Youth and Family Department records that could include evidence that the infant’s mother had abused him.

    State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer postponed her decision on that motion during a hearing Tuesday, saying she needed to review the Children Youth and Family Department records before ruling.

    Aarons also filed a motion challenging one of the state’s expert witnesses, saying the proposed witness’s opinions on “shaken baby syndrome” as it relates to pinpointing when the child received the fatal injury are not typical and have been contradicted in literature that says determining time of injury is the unreliable “Achilles heel” of forensic pathology.

    Sommer also postponed ruling on that motion Tuesday, directing Aarons and Assistant District Attorney Larissa Breen to expand written briefs on the issue before the judge considers the matter again next month

  • Investigation into fourth Martens suspect ‘has stalled’

    BY KATY BARNITZ / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

    Two detectives assigned full time to the Victoria Martens homicide case will begin work on unrelated investigations after attempts to identify an elusive fourth suspect have stalled, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

    “In the absence of Jessica Kelley’s continued cooperation following the District Court’s rejection of her plea agreement, the investigation into the unidentified male has stalled,” Michael Patrick, DA’s Office spokesman, said in a statement. “Detectives will continue to work any new leads that are developed, but it is our understanding that they will also support other investigations.”

    In September, Kelley had been set to plead guilty to multiple charges under an agreement that required her to testify at related trials and to offer statements to authorities. District Attorney Raúl Torrez said then that her cooperation was critically important to the state’s investigation into the well-dressed stranger that Kelley says killed the 10-year-old girl. But Judge Charles Brown rejected the plea, saying he was not presented with enough evidence that Kelley committed the crimes to which she was pleading.

    Gilbert Gallegos, spokesman for APD, said the detectives “hit a critical point” in their investigation into the mystery suspect and expressed to their supervisors that they “felt like they could be doing additional work (in other cases) while they wait for these new leads.”

    “They’re still on the case – they’ll still be prepared to go forward if they develop new leads,” he said. “A new lead could come in any number of ways.”

    City spokeswoman Alicia Manzano said in an email Monday that the city is “committed to seeing the case through to the end,” but the police department is “also working on other crimes throughout the city, and needs to make the best use of resources, including detective time.”

    Kelley is set for trial next month; her attorney declined to comment on the development.

    But the announcement came as no surprise to Steve Aarons, the Santa Fe attorney who is representing Kelley’s cousin and co-defendant, Fabian Gonzales.

    “The fourth suspect is a figment of Jessica Kelley’s imagination, just one more false statement to avoid life in prison for her murder of Victoria Martens,” he wrote in an email.

    Kelley said during a September hearing that she was high on meth and baby-sitting Victoria when a man she did not know walked in and killed the girl. Prosecutors said he then told Kelley to clean up the mess or she and her children would be next. Prosecutors say the child was killed in an act of retaliation after Gonzales made threats to members of a rival gang.

    When police were called to the Martens family’s apartment on the West Side hours later, they found the child’s body burning in a bathtub. Kelley and Gonzales, who was dating Victoria’s mother at the time, are accused of dismembering the girl.

    Michelle Martens, the child’s mother, has pleaded guilty to various crimes and faces up to 15 years in prison. Contrary to early accounts of the crime, prosecutors say neither she nor Gonzales was at the apartment at the time of Victoria’s death.

    Kelley had been expected to plead guilty to child abuse resulting in death and lesser charges, and she faced nearly 50 years in prison.

    But Brown said he would not accept that agreement, saying there was no indication that Kelley knew or should have known that the person who entered the apartment intended to kill the child.

    In a press conference shortly after that hearing, Torrez suggested that the rejection would harm his office’s ability to prosecute remaining suspects and to identify the fourth one. And Gallegos said Monday that if Kelley were to accept another plea agreement, detectives could wind up with new leads.

    At trial, she faces numerous charges, including murder and child abuse resulting in death.

    Detectives ‘disappeared’

    Monday’s announcement regarding the investigation comes after the two APD detectives working the case cleared out their workspace at the DA’s Office on Thursday night and left their key cards behind without first notifying prosecutors, Patrick said Friday.

    “There’s no reason for it. They’ve been investigating this case for the better part of two years,” Patrick said. “Suddenly they’ve – without notice or even a phone call – they’ve disappeared.”

    They had been working in a shared space with the DA’s Office, focusing solely on the Martens case.

    Gallegos said that night that the detectives received permission from their supervisors “to work on additional investigations in the department while the prosecution wraps up its trial work in this case.” He said detectives would be available to pursue new leads as they arise.

    By Saturday morning, Patrick said he had been told by APD leadership that “the two detectives will be back on Monday.”

    “It doesn’t appear that the mayor knew that they had been pulled,” Patrick wrote in a text.

    Patrick sent an email Monday afternoon acknowledging the detectives would be working other cases as well.

    Copyright © 2018 Albuquerque Journal

    Reprinted with Permission

  • Man gets 7 years for kidnapping, battery in Santa Fe

    Man gets 7 years for kidnapping, battery in Santa Fe
    Daniel Tadege is led to the podium during his plea hearing in June in District Court. Phaedra Haywood/New Mexican file photo

    A judge on Monday sentenced an Ethiopian immigrant to seven years in prison for his role last year in the drug-related kidnapping and pistol whipping of a Santa Fe teenager.

    Authorities said Daniel Tadege, 21, and two or three other people went to the home of a 17-year-old boy, forced the victim into a Jeep at gunpoint, then beat and threatened the teen with a gun before abandoning him on Mutt Nelson Road.

    Tadege in June pleaded guilty to kidnapping and aggravated battery in a plea deal that exposed him to between two and 10 years in prison.

    Defense lawyer Stephen Aarons said Tadege had been left alone in the United States at the age of 18 when his mother and sister returned to Ethiopia, and that Tadege began dealing cocaine to support himself and pay tuition at Santa Fe Community College.

    Aarons said the victim was a customer who had robbed Tadege of money and drugs at gunpoint a few days earlier.

    Tadege’s assaulted the younger man, Aarons said, “to take his stuff back and teach [the victim] never to jump him again.”

    “It doesn’t justify it,” the lawyer said, “but it does explain it.”

    Aarons said Tadege’s mother had flown in from Ethiopia to attend the hearing, but she did not speak Monday. Another Ethiopian woman, a friend of the family, did speak on Tadege’s behalf, begging the judge to “correct the real horror” that had befallen him when he was left alone in a country that was not his own.

    “They brought him here and left him on the street,” she said.

    Aarons asked District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to send Tadege to a two-year program at the Delancey Street Foundation, a residential self-help program aimed rehabilitating substance abusers, ex-convicts and others.

    But prosecutor Blake Nichols asked the judge to give Tadege prison time.

    “The state is not immune to the plight of immigrant youth and does not oppose folks coming to this country for opportunity,” Nichols said. “The opportunity to sell cocaine and beat someone within an inch of his life is not the opportunity they came here for.”

    Tadege also addressed the court, saying he recognized that he made mistakes that hurt the victim and his family and asking for “a chance to get a grip” on his life at Delancey Street.

    But the judge sentenced Tadege to prison, noting that Tadege had a job in a restaurant when his mother left the country but, apparently unsatisfied with the money he earned there, resorted almost immediately to “illegal activity and significant violence.”

    The judge said Tadege would receive credit for about a year and a half spent behind bars but would have to serve 85 percent of his prison term — ineligible for day-for-day good time credit — because the crime was a serious violent offense.

    Sommer said Tadege would likely be deported upon completing his sentence. But Aarons said Tadege received a renewal of his 10-year green card while the case was pending and might have some time to remain in the country legally after his release.

    Tadege’s mother declined to comment following the hearing.

    District Attorney Marco Serna, asked whether the other participants in the kidnapping had been prosecuted, said “the victim was unable to identify either of the other adults who allegedly participated. The other defendant that was identified is a juvenile, and I cannot comment on juvenile cases.”

  • Murder charge against youth dropped, but he remains a suspect

    by Sami Edge The New Mexican | © The New Mexican | reprinted with permission

    District Attorney Marco Serna said Tuesday he will dismiss a murder charge against a 17-year-old Santa Fe boy, but the youth remains a suspect in the shooting death of a man from Michigan.

    The defendant, Zachary Gutierrez, was charged in the murder of 64-year-old Richard Milan. Milan died after being shot in September while walking his dog near Airport road.Serna said his staff does not have time to present the case to a grand jury before a Dec. 13 deadline. Even so, Gutierrez remains a suspect in Milan’s death, Serna stated in an email.

    Earlier this month, Serna told The New Mexican that pursuit of an indictment against Gutierrez had been postponed because his office was reviewing new information. Neither he nor police would elaborate on the new information.

    But Gutierrez’s attorney, Stephen Aarons, wrote on his website Tuesday that he recovered new video recordings of eye witnesses in the case which, he says, “confirmed that Gutierrez was an innocent bystander, not the shooter.”

    “We commend the prosecution and Santa Fe Police Detectives in reopening their investigation in light of new evidence,” Aarons wrote. “What is important now is to find the truth and prosecute the real shooter for this senseless murder.”

    Serna said Gutierrez will remain incarcerated at a youth detention center until mid-December. Milan, of Kalamazoo, Mich., was in Santa Fe visiting relatives when he was shot.

  • Murder charge dropped against Santa Fe teen

    By Edmund Carrillo / Journal Staff Writer © Albuquerque Journal 2018 | reprinted with permission

    SANTA FE — A murder charge is going to be dropped against a Santa Fe teen Tuesday, according to the boy’s defense attorney. Santa Fe lawyer Steve Aarons said in a press release Tuesday morning that charges of murder and tampering with evidence will be dismissed against 17-year-old Zachary Gutierrez.

    Aarons said he provided video that proves Gutierrez was an innocent bystander and not the shooter in 64-year-old Richard Milan’s death on Airport Road on Sept. 26. “I was very happy to tell Zach and his family this morning that they are dropping the murder case against him,” Aarons wrote.

    Santa Fe Police Department reports say Milan, of Kalamazoo, Mich. – who was on a cross-country trip and visiting relatives in Santa Fe – was walking his dog along Airport Road when he encountered a group of young people at the intersection of Lucia Lane.Surveillance video from a nearby business captures Milan going down from two gunshot wounds to his lower body. He later died from blood loss at the hospital.

    Aarons provided an email that he received from Santa Fe prosecutor Heather Smallwood Tuesday morning that said, “I wanted to give you a heads up that I am filing a dismissal in this case today.” No one from the Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office could immediately be reached.

    SFPD spokesman Greg Gurule said early Tuesday afternoon that the department was not aware of the District Attorney’s decision to dismiss the case.“The case remains under investigation there have been no additional arrests,” Gurule said in an email. “No suspects on the loose.”

  • DA Drops Murder Case

    Santa Fe, New MexicoThe prosecution is dropping its murder case against Zachary Gutierrez. On September 26, 64-year old Richard Milan, a resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was visiting his daughter in Santa Fe when he was shot in the leg while walking his small dog on Airport Road near Lucia Lane. He later died at the hospital.

    On October 6th, police arrested Gutierrez, age 17, and charged him with an open count of murder and tampering with evidence. He has been held in juvenile detention ever since. One day before the case was headed to the grand jury, however, defense attorney Steve Aarons produced video recordings of eyewitnesses who confirmed that Gutierrez was an innocent bystander, not the shooter. At 8:20 am, Heather Smallwood, Senior Trial Attorney, sent an email to Aarons stating that she “wanted to give a heads up” that she is “filing a dismissal in this case today.”

    We commend the prosecution, and Santa Fe Police Detectives, in reopening their investigation in light of new evidence. What is important now is to find the truth and prosecute the real shooter for this senseless murder. I was very happy to tell Zach and his family this morning that they are dropping the murder case against him.

  • Suspect in fatal shooting to remain in jail until trial

    A state District Court judge in Santa Fe ruled Friday that Anton Martinez, one of four adult suspects charged in last week’s fatal shooting of a teen on a highway north of Española, was too dangerous to be allowed out of jail while awaiting trial.

    District Attorney Marco Serna said Martinez, who faces a murder charge, proved he was a threat to the community when he armed himself with a Colt 45 provided by his friend Mark Hice and began shooting, indiscriminately, at a car full of teenagers when Hice gave the order.

     

    New Mexico State Police believe the shooting victims — Cameron Martinez, 18, a popular graduate of Española High School who was killed by a gunshot wound, and three others who were injured — were targeted by mistake.

    Serna said Hice told police he had fired nine shots during the incident, while another suspect “fired a full magazine” and 19-year-old Anton Martinez fired once.

    But Anton Martinez’s attorney, Stephen Aarons, argued that witnesses gave conflicting testimony about whether his client had fired any shots.

    Anton Martinez’s older brother took the stand Friday, testifying that another teen riding in the car that night had said in social media messages that Anton had not fired on Cameron Martinez and his friends. Instead, the brother said, Anton Martinez had joined other occupants of the vehicle in urging Hice to stop firing.

    District Judge Jason Lidyard ruled in favor of state prosecutors, however, saying Serna had presented sufficient evidence Anton Martinez was a threat to the community and should not be released pending his trial.

    Anton Martinez is one of seven people — three of them minors — who have been arrested since the shooting, which occurred around 9:30 p.m. Oct. 4 on N.M. 68 near the Ohkay Hotel Casino.

     

    State police have charged Anton Martinez, Hice, 22, and Alex Zamarron, 17, with first-degree murder. Arrest warrant affidavits say Hice admitted to officers that he gave guns to several of his friends, and they drove around in two cars Oct. 4, prepared to open fire on people who had been threatening him on social media.

    Hice’s girlfriend, Brittany Garcia, 21, along with Katryna Moya, 17, and Alejandra Gonzalez, 16, have been charged with lesser crimes, including tampering with evidence and conspiracy.

    State police Officer Ray Wilson, a spokesman for the agency, said a seventh suspect, 23-year-old Savannah Martinez, turned herself in around 3 p.m. Thursday. It was unclear what charges she may face.

    According to initial police reports, Hice, Anton Martinez, Garcia and Savannah Martinez were in one car and Zamarron, Moya and Alejandra Gonzalez were in another.

    The group had been cruising N.M. 68 on high alert, Hice told police. Some of them had been involved in an altercation on the highway earlier in the day, firing shots at another group of teens.

    When they encountered the vehicle carrying Cameron Martinez and his friends, they mistook them for some of their “enemies” and opened fire, realizing later they had targeted the wrong people, according to reports.

    Detention hearings for Hice and Garcia also were scheduled Friday, but their attorneys said they were waiving their rights to expedited hearings on prosecutors’ motions to detain them without bail until trial. The attorneys wanted more time to prepare for the hearings, they said.

     

    Friends and family members of both victims and suspects — many of them young people — packed Lidyard’s courtroom for the Friday hearing. Many of them were in tears over the fatal shooting, which has deeply affected residents of the Española Valley.

     

    Anton Martinez’s aunt, Nancy Martinez, said after the hearing she didn’t feel the state had proven her nephew fired a gun.

    But, she said, she understood the community’s need for some type of justice and felt it would help those in mourning “knowing something was being done.”

    “I think the community needs to grieve,” she said. “The judge not letting him out protects him in a certain way, too, because the community is really angry. And he’s just a kid, too.