Murder trial in 2020 shooting death ends in mistrial

A judge declared a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a verdict in the trial of Jesus Torres, who is charged in the 2020 death of a man found fatally shot in his Northwest Albuquerque mobile home.

The 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Monday it plans to retry Torres, 34, on a charge of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Raymond Lovato. District Judge Emeterio Rudolfo had not scheduled a new trial on Monday.

Torres’ attorney, Stefanie Gulley, could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies found Lovato fatally shot with six gunshot wounds to his chest on Sept. 25, 2020, on a couch inside his mobile home near Paseo del Norte and Second NW.

In September 2021, more than a year after Lovato’s death, a fugitive task force captured Torres following an armed confrontation in a parking lot at Route 66 Casino.

The case against Torres relied heavily on phone and social media records that prosecutors said tracked his movements with “incredible accuracy” the day of Lovato’s killing.

The phone records showed that Torres went to Lovato’s mobile home around the time neighbors say they heard gunshots at the residence, Assistant District Attorney Stephen Lane said in opening statements last week.

“You are going to hear this tracking evidence that very specifically puts (Torres) at the trailer at the time that shots were heard,” Lane told jurors. “You are going to hear that Jesus Torres, before he went to Ray Lovato’s, made a stop at a gun store on his way home before he went to Ray Lovato’s apartment and shot him.”

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, a woman told deputies she had been with Lovato when a man he appeared to recognize walked into the mobile home.

The witness said the man had his hand near his waistband and that she “interpreted his body language” as wanting her to leave, the complaint said. The woman told deputies she went into another room, heard gunshots, then climbed onto the roof of the trailer.

Lovato’s ex-girlfriend told deputies that Lovato became upset with her after she and Torres took a trip together to California. Prosecutors said the two returned to Albuquerque two days before Lovato’s death.

Deputies found calls and messages from Torres to Lovato’s phone in the hours prior to his death, the complaint said. Investigators were able to track Torres’ cellphone as being at Lovato’s house for two minutes at the time of the slaying, it said.