APD releases details of two recent police shootings

The Albuquerque Police Department on Friday detailed two recent police shootings that happened days apart — one that injured an armed robbery suspect and another that killed a woman who took a security guard’s gun and fired it repeatedly outside a hotel near Downtown.

During an hour-long briefing Friday, APD shared lapel video and photo evidence while giving a play-by-play of the shootings. The incidents were the seventh and eighth Albuquerque police shootings in 2025. Six of those shootings have been fatal.

Cmdr. Kyle Hartsock, who oversees APD’s Criminal Investigations Bureau, said in the first incident, on June 16, a detective with the Investigative Support Unit shot 23-year-old Gabriel Moralez from 70 feet away as he ran from officers with a gun in his hand.

The next day, he said, officers Jonathan Kreamer, Michael Morales and Angel Avalos shot and killed Desiree Herrera, 36, as she fired a gun she had taken from a hotel security guard toward officers at the Hotel Parq Central.

Hartsock said during Friday’s briefing that the department would not identify the detective who shot Moralez, a common refrain in shootings involving ISU — a group APD says is often tasked with arresting felony offenders. He said it was the seventh time the detective, who has been with APD since 2007, had shot at someone and that the detective was back to full duty.

He said ISU, like the SWAT team, has always been in more shootings than other units due to the number of interactions they have with suspects in serious crimes.

Police Chief Harold Medina did suggest ways in which APD is looking to reduce the number of fatal shootings by ISU detectives, suggesting using a police dog to apprehend suspects.

“I know canines reduce shootings and save lives, and one of the things we’re working towards is ensuring that we’re able to dispatch a canine with these units,” Medina said. Earlier this year, an APD K-9 named Rebel was fatally shot, along with the armed suspect he was biting, when officers opened fire during a confrontation outside a motel near the Sunport.

Search for robbery suspect ends in gunfire

At 3:08 p.m., officers were dispatched to the Circle K at Coors and Bluewater on the West Side after employees said they had just been robbed at gunpoint, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

The man, later identified as Moralez, left with $140 and “approximately eight cigarette packets in two gray plastic bags,” the criminal complaint stated.

ISU caught up to Moralez roughly a mile and a half away from the gas station and chased him through a dirt lot as they shouted for him to drop his gun and stop running, according to lapel video. Two sergeants deployed less-lethal 40 mm foam rounds to try to stop Moralez, but he continued to run toward a residential neighborhood.

“You’re going to get (expletive) shot, stop,” the ISU detective shouted at Moralez. The ISU detective fired at Moralez five times, with one bullet hitting him on his right hip.

APD provided no photo or video that clearly showed Moralez pointing a gun at police. In a release Friday, APD said the ISU detective told investigators that Moralez “turned his upper body and extended his left arm out with the handgun toward the direction where the other detectives were approaching.”

Hartsock said a gun found near Moralez had been purchased by Moralez’s father in 2017. Officers believe the gun was handed down to Moralez after his father died.

Moralez was transported to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where he stayed for one night before being booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and evading police officers.

“We’re glad our client wasn’t killed in this incident,” Nicolas Corbitt, Moralez’s attorney, said in an interview Friday. “We’ll be looking closely at the discovery provided by the state.”

Mental health call leads to fatal police shooting

It was on June 16 that officers encountered Herrera initially, when she flagged down police in the area of Unser and Interstate 40 to ask for a ride to the hospital, according to a release from APD.

“At some point during the night, Herrera walked away from the hospital,” the release states.

Early the following morning, around 4:26 a.m., officers responded to a disturbance at Hotel Parq Central at Central and Interstate 25. Employees reported a woman in the midst of a mental health crisis, later identified as Herrera, was destroying property in the lobby.

Hotel surveillance footage showed Herrera and a security guard get into a scuffle, where Herrera managed to remove a gun from a holster on the guard’s hip. Herrera ran out in front of the hotel, armed with the gun, and shot through an SUV parked outside as people scattered from the area.

Hartsock played footage that showed officers arriving and Herrera running up the steps in front of the hotel. From the steps, Herrera fires the gun repeatedly in the air as police tell her to stop.

“She does eventually fire the gun directly at officers,” Hartsock said. In lapel video, a bullet can be seen striking an SUV police were using for cover before the three officers open fire.

Hartsock said none of the officers had been involved in a previous police shooting. Kreamer has been with the department since 2016, Morales since 2024, and Avalos since 2019. Morales is “not yet back to full duty,” Hartsock said.

Medina said that policymakers in the state need to fix the mental health system at the state level and he was upset to learn Herrera tried to reach out for help the night before the shooting.

“Yet, fast-forward, less than two days, and we’re dealing with this individual armed out in the street,” he said. “Something has to change within the system ... We put our officers and the public in danger and individuals going through mental health crisis lose their lives because they’re unable to care for themselves. I’m going to say it, the system is broken. Can our policymakers please fix this at the state level?”

An obituary from a funeral home said Herrera “leaves behind a large and loving family who will cherish her memory forever.”