State wants prison for ex-UNM student part of 2022 deadly shooting involving NMSU basketball player

The State of New Mexico says it’s time Eli-Sha Upshaw goes to prison.

The 21-year-old former University of New Mexico student was sentenced in June to 4½ years of probation after admitting to his role in a November 2022 ambush scheme of a New Mexico State University basketball player that ultimately ended in the shooting death of another UNM student, Brandon Travis.

Upshaw was in an Albuquerque courtroom on Wednesday being arraigned on charges he violated his probation sentence from June, when he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and conspiracy stemming from the 2022 case.

Maryland police in July — less than one month after being sentenced to probation in Albuquerque — arrested and charged Upshaw with a new felony related to an alleged drug deal gone bad involving an allegation he had a gun.

That led to his being extradited back to New Mexico, where he has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center since Nov. 13. He was still in custody as of Thursday night.

While the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office has asked that his probation be revoked, the charges in Maryland that brought all of this about have since been dropped due to an uncooperative witness.

At Upshaw’s probation violation arraignment hearing Wednesday, a state district judge said he can be released from jail for now with ankle monitor surveillance. A Jan. 15 probation adjudicatory hearing has been set to rule on the matter, but so has an evidentiary hearing next Wednesday that also could lead to movement in the case.

The original probation violation charge filed by the New Mexico Corrections Department on July 25 focused on the allegation he had committed a new crime while in possession of a firearm. A “Major Violations Addendum” filed last week by the probation and parole office argues Upshaw also violated at least three other terms of his probation, though it seems to acknowledge that may have been due to his being arrested for the case that is now not being pursued in Maryland.

Last week’s new probation violation memo states Upshaw’s probation violations in Maryland, where he was allowed to go and live with his mother, include:

• Not seeking any treatment for substance abuse
• Not securing regular employment
• Not completing 20 hours per month of community service

Upshaw is one of four former UNM students who police say orchestrated a revenge plot to attack Mike Peake, a former NMSU basketball player, for Peake and other Aggie basketball players having been involved in a violent brawl at an Aggie-Lobo football game in October 2022 in Las Cruces. That was a month prior to the November 2022 shooting on the morning of the scheduled NMSU-UNM rivalry men’s basketball game to be played in the Pit.

Peake, who brought his personal gun with him on the team bus from Las Cruces, had it when he went to meet a 17-year-old female UNM student around 3 a.m. on UNM’s campus on Nov. 19. 2022. He used that gun in self defense in an exchange of gunfire with Travis captured on video surveillance cameras.

Peake was shot in the leg and hasn’t played basketball since. Travis was shot and killed on the scene.

Upshaw, Jonathan Smith, 21, and Mya Hill, who was 17 at the time of the incident, were all part of the scheme with Travis, police say, and each has been sentenced to probation. Peake was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing.