Three men charged in October fatal shooting of West Side woman

Albuquerque police say the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old woman inside the doorway of her West Side home in October occurred after two masked men on meth demanded she open the door so they could rob her, according to court records filed this week.

Brandy McManus was killed in front of her 10-year-old daughter around 10 p.m. Oct. 11, 2023, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in state District Court in Albuquerque. The girl, who wasn’t hurt, phoned McManus’ husband. He called 911.

Before fleeing, the two masked men “engaged in a gunfight” with a neighbor who came out of his home after hearing the gunshot, an Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman said. The neighbor, who was armed, wasn’t injured. The two jumped into a car driven by a third suspect.

Details of the botched robbery and shooting were made public Thursday after Albuquerque police filed homicide and other charges against three men alleged to have hatched the plan to rob McManus of a firearm they had seen on a social media post.

Detectives arrested Joseph Montoya, 32, and Austin Wilkins, 28. The third suspect, Kristopher Darling, 24, was already in jail on other charges. All three men are charged with an open count of murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and tampering with e vidence.

“The victim wouldn’t open the door, so she was shot,” stated a prosecutor’s motion filed Friday for pretrial detention of Wilkins and Montoya.

“Austin, Kris and Joseph planned a robbery of Brandy and during the process shot and killed her (through an exterior window) in front of her minor child because Brandy refused to allow masked strangers into her home,” states the APD complaint.

The complaint alleged that one of the three men either knew McManus or her husband, “and saw a social media post (likely about firearms) and since he knew them in some capacity, they made the decision to rob Brandy for the firearm(s).” The shooting occurred in the 6000 block of Canis NW.

APD’s Digital Intelligence Team worked with homicide detectives to track the phones used by the suspects, which led them to a firearm that matched the gun used in the shooting. Evidence also implicated the suspects in planning the robbery to steal a gun.

Darling told the APD in an interview last week that he and the other two suspects were drinking and Wilkins and Montoya “were doing drugs (methamphetamine) in the kitchen of a home where he and Montoya were staying.

“Kris said that the pair approached him and said they needed a ride to go ‘pull a lick’ (slang for robbing someone) and meet up with some girls,” the complaint states. Darling said he borrowed his girlfriend’s Honda Accord and they used GPS to navigate to the McManus house. He said he waited in the car on a nearby street while the other two walked to the home.

The neighbor told police he thought he heard someone breaking into his vehicle in the front yard, and retrieved his firearm and went out to investigate. He was in his front driveway when he encountered “two masked people holding guns running towards him.” One of the men started firing at him, so he ducked and tried to get cover behind a vehicle.

“He said he intended to draw fire away from the house where his family slept and ran into the street where he returned gunfire,” the complaint states. The men wore ski-style masks and dressed in all black.