Man charged in carjacking turned homicide on East Central

A man is accused of fatally shooting a 61-year-old man whose truck he had just stolen in July outside a Southeast Albuquerque motel.

Juan Delarosa, 21, is charged with an open count of murder, armed robbery and shooting from a motor vehicle in the July 4 death of Alfonso Aguilar.

Danielle Silva, an Albuquerque police spokeswoman, said Delarosa was arrested by U.S. Marshals. She said Delarosa “admitted to his role in the shooting death” to homicide detectives soon after.

Delarosa was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Thursday. It is unclear if he has been assigned an attorney.

Prosecutors have filed a motion to keep Delarosa behind bars until trial.

“There is every reason to believe (Delarosa) is inherently dangerous,” according to the motion. “He treats the lives of others in a very casual way.”

Officers responded around 4:45 p.m. to a shooting at the Luxury Inn on Central, west of Louisiana.

Police found Aguilar with a bullet hole in his chest and he was taken to a hospital in critical condition, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Police said surveillance video showed the carjacking and the shooter appeared to be a man with curly dark hair and a “bow-legged” walk.

Police said, from his hospital bed, Aguilar told them a man with curly hair demanded his truck at gunpoint before another man and a woman jumped inside. Aguilar told police he grabbed onto the truck’s door handle as they drove away and the curly-haired man shot him.

When police asked if they could search his truck when it was found, Aguilar said “no,” according to the complaint. Police found Aguilar’s truck days later outside a North Valley home, and, on July 10, Aguilar died at the hospital.

Detectives got a search warrant for his truck and found three phones, a gun and a single bullet casing inside.

A woman who lived at the home where the truck was found told police Delarosa had dropped it off, according to the complaint, and another person said Delarosa had tried to sell the truck to them and told them he had carjacked it.

Detectives found police interacted with Delarosa on July 27 and matched his appearance in the lapel video — showing him with curly hair, a bow-legged walk and physical build — similar to that of a subject seen in the surveillance video of the homicide.