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The man accused of stabbing four people along Central in Albuquerque on Sunday told police that he has regular blackouts and can’t remember the incident, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.
The complaint identifies the suspect as Leroy Lopez, 33. He was arrested on two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Four people were stabbed in Albuquerque on Sunday afternoon. Three people were attacked in the Downtown area and another person was stabbed in the face further west on Central. They were all expected to survive their injuries.
The complaint says that two of the victims didn’t want to participate in the investigation. Some of the victims also could not identify the suspect, according to the complaint.
At about 2:15 p.m., police were called to the 2700 block of Central NW, near Tingley Beach, for a report that a man had been stabbed in the neck. He was transferred to University of New Mexico Hospital to be treated for a laceration and didn’t want to participate in the investigation, according to the complaint.
Five minutes later, officers were called to the 400 block of West Central, where a woman had been stabbed in the neck. She later spoke with police officers but wasn’t able to identify Lopez from an array of photographs. She did describe the knife, according to the complaint.
At 2:40 p.m., officers were called to Fifth and Central NW, where a man had been stabbed in the neck. The man told officers he met Lopez outside of a pizza place on Central. He said everything seemed fine and they were walking together when Lopez stabbed the man in the neck near Sixth and Central without warning. The man identified Lopez by looking at photographs and provided a description of Lopez’s clothing. Police have said that one thing that stood out among the witnesses was that Lopez was wearing a hat that resembled the one Walter White wore in the “Breaking Bad” television show when using his drug-lord alias, Heisenberg.
A little more than an hour later, police were called to the Golden Pride restaurant near the 5200 block of Central SW, where a man had been stabbed in the face. That man later told police he didn’t want to pursue criminal charges.
Officers watched surveillance footage of that stabbing and took Lopez into custody shortly after.
“Leroy told officers he has regular blackouts where he does not remember his actions,” an officer wrote in the complaint. “He did not recall the incident.”
Lopez was booked into jail in connection with two of the stabbings. It wasn’t clear Monday who his attorney will be.
Lopez has been accused of crimes involving knives before in previous cases. In 2019, he was arrested in one case where he reportedly armed himself with two knives and charged after a man. Lopez later broke into the man’s home and attacked him, according to court documents. He was also arrested on suspicion of threatening a man with a knife who was sleeping behind an antique store. Those cases were later dismissed, once by prosecutors and once because the alleged victims didn’t participate in pretrial interviews.
He was convicted in February 2021 of a battery on a police officer charge. He was sentenced to four years in prison with three years suspended, according to court records.
