Albuquerque teens arrested after carjacking attempt erupts into deadly shootout

Albuquerque police say a carjacking attempt by a group of teens erupted in gunfire and left a 14-year-old boy dead and a woman injured early Wednesday morning.

Jeriah Salas, 15, is charged with attempted armed robbery, aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at a motor vehicle and conspiracy in the case.

Salas has been booked into the juvenile detention center.

The Law Offices of the Public Defender said its attorneys were “just beginning to speak with our clients and find appropriate representation for them.”

“This is a heartbreaking case for everyone involved. Still, we should not judge these kids as throwaways or lost causes,” LOPD District Defender Dennica Torres said in a statement. “We don’t know what brought them into this situation.”

The Albuquerque Police Department said Salas shot a woman and her husband returned fire, fatally shooting Salas’ accomplice, Alonzo Sanderson, 14. Police said seven youths between the ages of 12 and 17 were involved in the robbery attempt and one of them, a 15-year-old girl, was grazed by a bullet.

APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said police arrested all seven of the youths, including Salas, and the other six are charged with attempted armed robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy.

“Detectives are investigating the death as a justifiable homicide since the husband of the victim was defending his wife and himself during an armed robbery,” Gallegos said. “The wife, an adult female in her 30s, was treated for two gunshot wounds and released (Wednesday) from the hospital.”

Officers responded around 12:20 a.m. to reports of a shooting at an apartment complex along Copper, just east of Chelwood Park, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Police found Sanderson fatally shot near a white Chevy Malibu and he died at a hospital.

Police said a teen with Sanderson told detectives someone in a Jeep shot at them in the parking lot of The Ridge apartments, up the block at Copper and Tramway. At that scene, officers found two guns, bullet casings, broken glass and blood but no suspects or victims.

A man called 911 to report his wife had been shot as they sat in a Jeep outside the complex and he had driven her to a hospital, according to the complaint. Another 911 call came in from a woman who said her 15-year-old daughter, who had “an apparent gunshot wound,” and her friends showed up to the family’s North Valley home but left before police arrived.

Police said at the hospital a man told them he and his wife were parked outside a friend’s apartment when two teens, one holding a gun in each hand, tried to carjack them. The man said one teen shot into the Jeep before he fired back six times with his own gun.

The man told police a teenage girl then jumped into the Jeep and began hitting him and he struck her with his gun, which had been fired empty, the complaint states. He said he then drove off and took his wife to the hospital.

Police said two of the teens found with Sanderson told detectives the group was “cruising around” in the Malibu when they pulled into the complex. The teens said when they passed the Jeep that Sanderson suggested they rob the people inside.

The teens told police Sanderson and Salas got out and pointed guns at the people inside the Jeep before gunfire rang out, according to the complaint. The teens said they put a wounded Sanderson in the Malibu and drove down the street to ask one of their mothers for gas money to get him to the hospital.

Police said one of the teens told them that, as they waited to see if they could get gas money, the group “conspired to say they were just standing in the parking lot, and the blue Jeep approached them and started shooting at the group.”