'What if we killed them?' Records offer glimpses of accused Las Cruces shooters

LAS CRUCES — Federal search warrants involving teenagers accused in the fatal Friday shootout in Las Cruces suggest they may face charges for firing guns within a few hundred feet of a school and tampering with evidence.

Gustavo Dominguez, 17, Nathan Rivas, 17, and Josiah Ontiveros, 15, have each been charged with three open counts of murder, along with 20-year-old Tomas Rivas, in the killing of three people at Young Park. The juveniles also face three counts apiece of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

On Tuesday, state District Judge Grace Duran denied them pretrial release, confining them to juvenile detention.

“They will be going to grand jury, where we are seeking to indict them as serious youthful offenders,” a spokesperson for 3rd Judicial District Attorney Fernando Macias told the Journal. “When that indictment happens, they will be treated like adults throughout the rest of the process, including the trial and sentencing.”

Tomas Rivas agreed to pretrial detention pending further court proceedings Wednesday.

The search warrants sought DNA samples used for matching the defendants to guns recovered by law enforcement. They also provide some details into an investigation that saw four defendants, identified by witnesses and videos of the incident, arrested within 36 hours of the shootout.

The day following the shooting, according to an affidavit, FBI agents followed a black Mercedes sedan they said was driven by Tomas Rivas with Nathan Rivas, identified in court filings as his brother, riding in the car.

Agents say they observed the younger Rivas remove a bag from the car that was subsequently found in a dumpster, where a partly loaded .40 caliber Glock handgun was recovered. Inside an apartment, agents recovered two more Glock firearms, 9mm and .45 caliber, each of which had been reported stolen.

Also recovered from the apartment was a jacket matching the description of a jacket shown in cellphone footage of the shooting, worn by someone resembling Nathan Rivas.

Witness accounts alleged Ontiveros, the youngest of the defendants, stood over one of the victims on the ground and shot him execution style. Another witness said that, as they fled the scene, Ontiveros and another shooter were heard saying words to the effect of, “What if we killed them?”

Witnesses said two groups with personal grievances, one described as “the Rivas brothers,” opened fire on each other. The three killed were Dominick Estrada, 19; Andrew “AJ” Madrid, 16; and Jason Gomez, 17. Fifteen more people from the ages of 16 to 36 were wounded by gunfire, according to police.

Delinquency petitions, similar to criminal complaints for juvenile defendants, cited previous complaints for the judge to consider in determining whether the minor defendants were eligible for pretrial release. Those records indicate that the three young men had faced allegations involving fights, assaults on household members and criminal damage to the property of household members. The complaints were variously dismissed, handled informally, or addressed with citations.

An accusation against Nathan Rivas involving a sex crime — an allegation that has gained currency on social media — ended in an acquittal, according to court records.

In 2023, Dominguez was accused of pointing a gun at a pedestrian who confronted a red Mustang Dominguez was riding in, which had allegedly been “speeding up and down” Karen Drive. Dominguez was 15 years old at the time. The case was dismissed.