Tomas Rivas found guilty in 2025 Young Park shooting

LAS CRUCES – The first of four murder trials stemming from last year’s deadly shootout in Young Park ended Monday afternoon with Tomas Rivas, 21, being convicted on three counts of first-degree murder.

The courtroom briefly burst into cheers on one side of the room and sobs on the other as state District Judge Douglas Driggers read out the verdicts convicting Rivas in the deaths of Dominick Estrada, 19, Andrew “AJ” Madrid, 16, and Jason Gomez, 17 on March 21.

“Today, we affirmed that in Doña Ana County, we do not accept violence as inevitable,” District Attorney Fernando Macias stated after the trial’s conclusion. “We choose to define ourselves not by the tragedy we have endured, but by the safety and peace we are determined to build. We owe it to these young men, and to every child in this community, to ensure that our parks remain places of joy, not sorrow.”

Gunfire roared at a car meet that night in the parking lot of the Las Cruces park. As mayhem escalated, smoke was still dissipating from burnt tires from cars that had been spinning doughnuts in the middle of the crowd. Eleven months later, a fog still obscured many facts in the case: Numerous mobile phones recorded parts of what happened in frantic video footage, and starkly different accounts of how the gun battle began were introduced in witness testimony.

In Monday’s closing arguments, Macias told the jury Rivas was “the leader of a pack of shooters” who came to the park with masks, guns and plans to kill Estrada. He then reviewed evidence presented during the six-day trial that Rivas, along with his brother, Nathan Rivas, 18, Josiah Ontiveros, 16, and Gustavo Dominguez, 18, drove to El Paso immediately after the shooting; and that Tomas Rivas attempted to dispose of his gun and a distinctive red jacket he had been wearing. 

On the stand Friday, Rivas denied attempting to hide the items and said his decisions to leave the scene and provide false statements to police were precipitated by fear.

“An innocent person runs to the law,” Macias countered in his argument to the jury Monday. “A guilty man runs away from the law.”

Rivas testified that he drew his weapon and fired on Estrada in self-defense after a verbal argument escalated into a physical fight in which witness Ruben Morales grappled with Dominguez – and was shot 14 times as guns blazed. Morales survived to share his story at Rivas’ trial.

Rivas said he fired back at Estrada as the latter crouched behind a tree and fired on him, admitting that he continued to fire until he was out of ammunition: Seventeen rounds were matched to his weapon.

However, defense attorney Thomas Clark said forensics confirmed that Rivas did not fire the shot that killed Estrada, and said there was also no evidence he had shot Gomez or Madrid, who were bystanders at the event. On Friday and again on Monday, Clark asked Driggers to dismiss the murder counts on the basis that “my client did not kill anyone.”

Driggers partially granted Clark's motion Friday, dropping three counts of willful and deliberate murder, but ruled that alternative counts of first-degree “depraved mind” murder – killing a human being “by any act greatly dangerous to the lives of others, indicating a depraved mind regardless of human life” – would go to the jury.

Prosecutors Macias and Spencer Willson argued that Rivas was culpable in all three murders by shooting Estrada and training gunfire in the direction of a crowd of over 100 people, indicating a “corrupt, perverse or malicious state of mind” indifferent to human life.

Clark maintained that Rivas acted in self-defense and withdrew and argued that witnesses' false statements to law enforcement and efforts to hide their own guns and obscure their involvement, even to the point of lying on the witness stand, only obscured events further. “There’s a colossal amount of lying to police in this case … Nobody could get their stories straight,” he said.

Clark also argued that Las Cruces police detectives, anticipating a highly publicized case, rushed their investigation based on a premature conclusion that Rivas and his cohorts were the aggressors.

The jury had the option of convicting Rivas on lesser included charges of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter. They unanimously found Rivas guilty of first-degree murder on all three counts after only a few hours of deliberation.

Clark could not immediately be reached after the trial. Rivas has been in custody since his arrest last year.

“When an individual brings a firearm into a crowded public space and unleashes chaos, they forfeit their right to walk free in our society,” Willson stated in a news release. “This was not self-defense; it was a criminal act with catastrophic consequences. We are grateful that the jury weighed the evidence, applied the law, and delivered justice for the Estrada, Madrid, and Gomez families."

The verdict exposes Rivas to a sentence of life in prison for each count. A sentencing hearing is to be scheduled later.

The murder trial for Nathan Rivas is set to begin Thursday once a jury is seated. Trials for Ontiveros and Dominguez are scheduled in April and July, respectively.

Algernon D’Ammassa is the Journal’s southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.