Teen arrested in connection with late December homicide in Northwest Albuquerque

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested about three weeks after the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Damion Alday in Northwest Albuquerque.

Andres Herrera, 17, was arrested in a Southwest Albuquerque home Monday afternoon and is being charged with an open count of murder and tampering with evidence, Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said.

Herrera has been booked inside the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center. It is unknown who his attorney is.

After the incident, Herrera reportedly admitted to shooting the victim in an Instagram post, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

At 4:22 p.m. on Dec. 27, APD responded to a call of shots fired at Sundoro Park, on the 9500 block of Endee Road near Kilauea and Vesuvius. When officers arrived, they found a man, later identified as Alday, lying on the ground behind a Chevy Camaro with multiple gunshot wounds to the head, according to the complaint.

The complaint states that video footage from the park showed the suspect and victim got out of their cars and started arguing. Alday then fell to the ground and the two exchanged gunfire. After the shooting stopped, the man approached Alday and shot him with what a witness told police was a handgun.

The shooter then ran to pick up what the witness told police believed was an assault rifle from the trunk of a Mazda, returned to Alday and shot him multiple times, according to the complaint.

Herrera got into the Mazda and fled westbound on Endee, the complaint states.

According to the complaint, APD’s license plate readers were able to locate the Mazda and connect the car to a late November Downtown incident involving Herrera, who lied to police about his name and said he had been a robbery victim.

APD was later able to figure out his real name by looking at his driver’s license, according to the complaint.

Police later found an Instagram post with Herrera admitting he shot Alday with a Glock firearm. “I laid off the first shot shooting him somewhere where he dropped to the ground then started shooting back(.) After a bit he was screaming then stopped n I walked up to him shooting him in the head 5 times,” the complaint states that the post read.