A district judge dismissed the cases against two men charged with armed robbery and aggravated battery, accused of luring a man to a house over a debt in March, then beating him with a rifle so badly they broke his teeth.
Prosecutors sought to have Eric Herrera, 42, of Coyote, and Alfonso Quintana, 43, of Española, held without bail pending trial on charges of armed robbery and aggravated battery for the alleged beating of a man. The man told police that he won a $1,200 jackpot at the Ohkay Casino, and a short time later, got a text from Lorenzo Bustos, never charged with a crime, to come to his house in Española “or he would die.”
When he walked into the house, Gino Tapia, 28, of Española; Quintana, Bustos and Herrera allegedly told him they wanted the money he won, then Quintana ordered him to lay on his stomach so he could pull his arms out of their sockets, broke his teeth with a rifle and then pointed it at him, Española City Police Detective James Mayers wrote in court documents.
When the man got free, Quintana allegedly shot at him, but missed, hitting a door. They allegedly chased him to the nearby Valdez Park, where he ran into a Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s deputy. The men stopped the chase once he got to the deputy, he wrote.
Charges against Tapia were dropped by prosecutors “pending further investigation” in May.
Witness Fails to Appear
Following a combined dangerousness and preliminary hearing, like a mini-trial, on Oct. 7, District Judge Anastasia Martin dismissed the charges against Quintana and Herrera and ordered they be released in an order dated Oct. 15.
“An essential witness for the State failed to appear and the State was unable to proceed without that essential witness,” Martin wrote in the order.
She dismissed the charges without prejudice, meaning prosecutors can bring them again.
Quintana and Herrera had been charged with one count each of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery.
Dangerous?
In the separate motions to hold Quintana and Herrera as dangers to the community, Prosecutor Kent Wahlquist wrote that both men have previously been accused in shooting cases.
Quintana allegedly shot at someone’s house multiple times in 2018, then drove away and when officers stopped and arrested him, they found drugs on him and guns in the vehicle. He was subsequently convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, shooting from a vehicle, drug possession and felon in possession of a firearm, part of a global plea deal in two cases.
He was arrested on a probation violation bench warrant in 2020 and officers found drugs on him and he “admitted to planning on ‘keistering’ the narcotics into the jail,” Wahlquist wrote.
In the motion to hold Herrera without bail, Wahlquist wrote that in 2019, a court ordered him held without bail as a danger, in a case where he stole a wallet and vehicle from a man at knife-point, after the man gave him a ride to Walmart. In that case, he took a global plea deal across five cases and was convicted of unlawful taking of a vehicle, possession of cocaine, tampering with evidence and breaking and entering.
He allegedly shot his girlfriend in the leg in 2023, a case that was dismissed as the victim was “uncooperative,” Wahlquist wrote.