Prosecutors seek to detain suspect in fatal shooting outside club in Southeast Albuquerque

Prosecutors have filed a motion to keep a man behind bars until trial in a fatal shooting Sunday outside a club in southeast Albuquerque.

A pretrial detention motion was filed Tuesday in the case against Keith Thompson, 56. Thompson is charged with an open count of murder and shooting from a motor vehicle.

He is currently behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center. It is unclear if Thompson has an attorney.

Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the man killed in the shooting is not being identified until his family is notified.

“The defendant shot and killed (the victim) in an argument. This is extreme and dangerous conduct,” prosecutors wrote in a pretrial detention motion filed in Metropolitan Court. “(The victim) was seemingly unarmed, with the defendant shooting from a motor vehicle.”

The incident marked the second homicide at the Navajo Elks Lodge in just over a year. In April 2024, Theodore Toney, 46, fatally shot 40-year-old Kenneth Ellis on the dance floor. Toney was convicted earlier this year.

Sunday’s shooting apparently stemmed from a dispute between the two men, police say.

Officers responded around 1:30 a.m. to the Navajo Elk’s Lodge on San Pedro, just south of Lomas, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. A woman called 911 and reported her boyfriend had been shot.

Upon arriving, police found the man lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound to the chest and another in the shoulder, the complaint stated. The woman told police she believed Thompson was responsible and saw his vehicle drive down San Pedro afterward.

Police said she told them Thompson and the man had been friends for over a decade, but had an argument after Thompson showed romantic interest in the woman. The woman said Thompson approached her and her boyfriend when they left the Navajo Elks Lodge.

She told police the men began to argue and Thompson accused the man of disrespecting him before a bystander broke up the altercation, according to the complaint. The woman said as they stood near the entrance, Thompson drove up and the two began to argue again.

“Only seconds after the argument resumed, (the woman) heard the sound of two gunshots and saw (Thompson’s) vehicle flee south through the parking lot,” the complaint stated.

Police said officers went to an apartment complex where Thompson lived, according to the woman, and saw the same vehicle the woman had described parked outside the complex.

“Investigators also used automated license plate readers to locate the vehicle at an intersection within minutes after the shooting,” Gallegos, the police spokesman, wrote in a release. Police arrested Thompson later that day.