Family looks back on shooting that left boy dead and woman unable to walk

Beverly Villegas sat in a motel parking lot down the street from Isotopes Park, waiting for her daughter. The minutes ticked by, and then Tatiana Villegas called and told her mother they had been shot.

Beverly Villegas raced up Avenida Cesar Chavez and found her sister-in-law’s truck stopped in the middle of the road, riddled with 14 bullet holes. She ran to her daughter and asked, “Are you OK?” but, by then, her daughter was unable to speak.

One of the five bullets that struck the 23-year-old woman went through her lung. Another had pierced her spine.

An ambulance whisked Tatiana away and — in a moment that Beverly Villegas called the “worst nightmare of my life” — she saw the body of her nephew, 11-year-old Froylan Villegas, in the front seat. He had been shot in the head.

“It has destroyed all of us, every, every one of us. I mean, this has just been so devastating. It’s just hard to believe,” Beverly Villegas told the Journal by phone Wednesday from her daughter’s hospital room — two weeks to the day after the shooting near the ballpark in Southeast Albuquerque.

Doctors have told the family that Tatiana Villegas will likely never walk again.

Within 48 hours of the shooting, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham cited the case as a deciding factor in her declaring gun violence a public health emergency in New Mexico and ordering, among other measures, a short-lived ban on the open and concealed carry of guns in Bernalillo County.

The governor’s action immediately sent the gun debate in New Mexico from the frying pan into the fire, garnering some praise and a lot of outrage. Lawsuits piled up alleging the order was unconstitutional, and Republican lawmakers called for Lujan Grisham’s impeachment.

Meanwhile, beneath all the political noise wrought by the tragedy, the Villegas family tried to pick up what pieces are left.

Holding a funeral for Froylan and making their home wheelchair-friendly for Tatiana Villegas, an independent young woman and hard worker with goals of her own, is now their reality.

“She had a future that, you know ... she wanted kids and she wanted to eventually move out and have her own life going for her,” Beverly Villegas said. “And now everything has just changed. They turned our whole world upside down, over nothing.

“I don’t understand how somebody can just drive up next to you and just fire 17 shots, hitting you 14 times, you know?”

Beverly Villegas said right to the end, Froylan and Tatiana were best friends who were “constantly together all the time.”

A picture from that Sept. 6 Isotopes baseball game showed the cousins hunkered close in the stands, Froylan’s brother in Tatiana’s lap.

“He was a very, very, very happy kid. He loved horses. His dream was always to be a trainer. But everybody who knew him — he brought joy to everyone’s life,” she said of Froylan, who would help clean the corrals and feed their horses at their home in Algodones.

Beverly Villegas said they have renamed his favorite horse “Froylan’s Storm” in his memory.

She said her daughter was very active, working out at the gym five days a week and working a full-time job. In her off time, she enjoyed going to dances and spending time with friends and family, particularly Froylan.

Beverly Villegas said her daughter’s boss gave them free tickets to the Isotopes game and she took Froylan, his mother and 3-month-old brother along. She said, with Tatiana driving, they left the game 10 minutes early “to try to avoid traffic.”

From her hospital bed, Tatiana Villegas told her mother the shots came out of nowhere. She first noticed the truck had stalled and initially thought she had hit something.

Then an SUV pulled alongside them and more gunfire erupted. Tatiana Villegas told her mother she ducked down and “could feel bullets flying towards her.”

“And then all of a sudden she felt like she didn’t have any more feeling in her body,” Beverly Villegas said.

She said in the aftermath, they are still counting what blessings they can. That Froylan’s mother and 3-month-old brother were not injured or harmed in the spray of gunfire.

But the family is now hoping for a second miracle, that Tatiana Villegas will one day walk again.

“We believe God will work a miracle,” Beverly Villegas said, “and we have faith that that’s going to happen.”