Judge orders alleged killer of an Uber driver held in custody pending trial

Sheliky Sanchez told police the day of his arrest in the shooting death of an Uber driver that he made sure his gun was loaded and ready before the driver arrived.

“It was easy,” Sanchez, 18, said of the alleged shooting in a video recording of his interview with police. “I enjoyed it. It was like an adrenaline rush. Like, a good one.”

A judge on Thursday ordered Sanchez held in custody while awaiting trial for first-degree murder, armed robbery and tampering with evidence in the killing of Joseph Andrus, the Uber driver shot to death.

Prosecutors played a portion of Sanchez’s interview with police during his pretrial detention hearing Thursday in 2nd Judicial District Court in Albuquerque.

Sanchez said he ordered Andrus to get out of his 2022 Ford Escape, but the driver was moving “way too slow,” according to the recording.

“He just did not want to move,” Sanchez told police in the video. “And once he actually ended up moving and went to go get out, I just, I just shot him.”

Sanchez estimated he fired five gunshots.

Thursday evening, Sanchez was charged with aggravated assault in a May incident in which he allegedly pointed a gun at his 7-year-old brother while drinking. At the time, police investigated the allegations, but the case fell apart because the family wouldn’t cooperate for the younger brother to be interviewed by detectives, according to a police spokesperson.

Judge Lucy Solimon said Thursday she considered Sanchez’s admission of guilt in the interview, among other factors, in her decision to order him held in jail pending trial.

“This is top five of the worst cases I’ve seen in terms of what is alleged to have happened,” Solimon said. “The weight of evidence against him is pretty high at this point.”

Albuquerque police responded to a gunshot detection device at 3:09 a.m. Aug. 7 and found Andrus lying in the street in the 400 block of Merlinda SW, near Central and Coors, according to a criminal complaint.

A security video showed Andrus’ 2022 Ford Escape traveling north on Coors at Central at 3:11 a.m., just minutes after the shooting.

Detectives learned Andrus, an Uber driver, received a ride request from a woman identified as Sanchez’s girlfriend and found Andrus’ vehicle outside her home in Southwest Albuquerque.

SWAT officers arrested Sanchez and his girlfriend after seeing them at her home.

Assistant District Attorney John Kloss said Thursday that Sanchez also told police that he had committed three previous killings, including one while he was in middle school. However, Kloss provided no details about the alleged killings and said Sanchez has not been charged.

The allegation prompted skepticism from Sanchez’s attorney, Lily Rowland.

“I have serious doubts with state’s assertion, despite Mr. Sanchez’s statements, that he has killed three other people,” Rowland told the judge.

Rowland called the statements an example of “grandstanding” by her 18-year-old client.

“The fact that he would have three undetected homicides under his belt at his age, I think, is something that the court should consider as extremely unserious,” she said.

Rowland also noted that someone other than Sanchez ordered the Uber ride.

“I fear that perhaps my client is taking responsibility for something he did not do in an attempt to protect someone else,” Rowland said.

The complaint states that Sanchez’s girlfriend told police he asked her around 1 a.m. to order an Uber because “his friend has a car for him and he is going to go get it.”

Sanchez initially denied asking his girlfriend to order an Uber and said he had purchased the Ford Escape from a man named “Angel.”

When an officer told Sanchez his story did not make sense, Sanchez said he shot Andrus to “let off some steam” because he was stressed, the complaint stated. He told police he had planned to steal a vehicle or shoot a driver.

In his recorded interview, Sanchez told police:

“I just wanted to get, like, satisfied,” he said in the video. “This is just like my way of coping.”