Woman arrested six years after fatal stabbing in SE Albuquerque

A woman is behind bars six years after she allegedly stabbed a man to death at a home in Southeast Albuquerque.

Antionette Hernandez, 29, was arrested Thursday and charged with an open count of murder and criminal trespass in the 2019 killing of 38-year-old Eric Lewis. Hernandez does not yet have an attorney.

Lewis’ stabbing went unsolved for six years after the detective on the case was promoted to sergeant, according to court records. The case was assigned to an investigator for review before it was transferred to a homicide detective in April 2025.

Prosecutors on Friday filed a motion to keep Hernandez behind bars until trial, saying she “exhibited violent and dangerous behavior that threatens the safety of the community.”

“The Court will be unable to ensure that the Defendant is not possessing knives, and not threatening, or hurting more innocent people,” the motion states.

Police were conducting a patrol on Sept. 27, 2019, of condemned houses in Southeast Albuquerque to ensure that people were not living inside them, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

Around 11:30 a.m., police entered a home that had been condemned in the 400 block of Utah SE, south of Zuni, and noticed “a wad of hair on the floor and a strange smell,” the complaint states.

Officers saw bloody shoe prints throughout the kitchen floor and found Lewis’ body, according to the complaint. An autopsy determined Lewis had been fatally stabbed.

The following day, police were called to the home again after it was reported that a woman — later identified as Hernandez — was taking items from the house, the complaint states.

Hernandez told police she was homeless and had been staying at the house for some time, even though she knew the building was red-tagged. She told police she returned to retrieve her belongings, according to the complaint. Hernandez was not arrested at that time.

A few months later, police were called twice on Hernandez, once in December for threatening to stab a woman on the city bus and again in January 2020 for allegedly stabbing a man in the leg, the complaint states.

In August 2020, blood drops found on the kitchen floor came back as a match for Hernandez, according to the complaint. In February 2021, Crime Stoppers put out on billboards and a flyer that Hernandez was being sought by police.

Officers attempted to interview Hernandez soon after she was brought into the hospital, but she was “extremely intoxicated and very uncooperative,” the complaint states.

Sometime after that interview, in February 2021, an investigator watched the body camera footage from when police found Hernandez in the home the day after the homicide.

The investigator saw, in the video, that the soles of Hernandez’s shoes showed a “striking resemblance” to the bloody shoe prints left in the kitchen, according to the complaint. The investigator also noticed Hernandez had multiple injuries on her right hand.

There is no further investigative documentation in the complaint until April 1, 2025, after the case was reassigned to another homicide detective. The detective went to the Metropolitan Detention Center to interview Hernandez, who was jailed in a separate case.

The complaint states the detective took DNA from Hernandez and she denied being involved in Lewis’ death but said she carried a knife for protection.

The DNA test results came back showing Hernandez’s DNA “could not be excluded” as a match to the DNA taken from the crime scene, according to the complaint.