Grand jury indicts teen in fatal shooting and armed robbery

A grand jury on Sept. 14 indicted a teen for shooting two people — killing one — and stealing a vehicle within a 24-hour span last month.

Austin Olimb, 18, is charged with an open count of murder, armed robbery, three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and lesser charges.

Olimb is accused of killing 17-year-old Angelo Tafoya during a robbery Sept. 16. In total, Olimb is facing nearly 50 charges. He does not yet have an attorney.

Olimb had been released from jail Sept. 5, where he was being held in a stolen vehicle case. According to a pretrial detention motion, he was under a court-order not to possess firearms in that case.

Olimb’s alleged accomplice, 17-year-old Ezekiel Ulibarri, is facing similar charges, including murder.

Albuquerque police responded around 12:45 a.m. to an urgent care at 7400 Menaul NE, near Pennsylvania, after a man showed up with a gunshot wound to the arm, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

Police said the injured man told them he was selling alcohol to a group at Cutler Park when the three males approached with a gun and told him to get out of the vehicle.

One of the males, later identified as Olimb, allegedly pistol whipped the man across the face before firing a shot that hit him in the arm, according to the complaint.

Police used a bullet casing left at Cutler Park to connect the shooting to a homicide that occurred later that day, the complaint states.

In that incident, officers responded around 9:45 p.m. to an alert from a gunshot detection device at The Ridge apartment complex in the 500 block of Tramway NE, near Copper, according to the complaint.

Officers found Tafoya shot multiple times.

Tafoya’s girlfriend told police Tafoya was planning on meeting with a group to trade two ounces of marijuana for a .40 caliber firearm, the complaint states. Tafoya’s girlfriend told police she felt like the group was acting suspicious, as though they were “sizing him up to rob him.”

Police said the girl told them the group left and came back to complete the trade when she heard several gunshots. She told police she left the apartment to find Tafoya dead.

Police said they used surveillance footage to track the group’s vehicle — a stolen blue Hyundai — west on Central.

The following day, Bernalillo County deputies pulled over a stolen red Hyundai near the 1700 block of Dietz Loop NW, near Rio Grande, and arrested Olimb and Ulibarri, according to the complaint. Deputies searched the vehicle and found two firearms, including a .40 caliber handgun.

Officers spoke with Ulibarri, who told them he had stolen the Hyundai and picked up Olimb and two others before the group went to Tafoya’s apartment, the complaint states.

Ulibarri told police Olimb shot Tafoya twice, got closer and shot two more times. According to police, the gun Tafoya was trading marijuana for was “the same handgun that was used to shoot and kill him,” according to the complaint.

Ulibarri told police Olimb took Tafoya’s gun, cellphone and the marijuana before the group left the apartment complex, the complaint states.

Police said Olimb told them he shot Tafoya but said the plan to shoot and rob Tafoya “came out of the blue.”

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Olimb told police, according to the complaint. “I was trying to hit him in his stomach so he would bleed a little bit, drop everything. I only went to go shoot him once. … My brain just squeezed (the trigger) more.”

Officers asked Olimb if he had committed any other robberies or shootings and Olimb told police he shot the man at the park to try to steal the liquor he was selling them.