A 19-year-old Española man accidentally killed himself Sept. 10, according to Española Police.
Aaron Garcia was shot in the lower jaw while playing with a .38 pistol, Española Police Sgt. Christian Lopez said. According to Lopez, Garcia put three rounds in a .38 pistol, spun the chamber and first fired once in the air, firing a blank chamber, witnesses told police. After spinning the chamber again, Garcia put the gun to his chin and pulled the trigger, this time firing a bullet, Lopez said.
Garcia’s mother Leann Baca said her son didn’t know the gun was loaded, believing his friend had taken out the bullets.
Police ruled the death accidental rather than a suicide.
“There was no indication he did this on purpose to end his life,” Lopez said.
Garcia’s sister Angel said the shooting occurred at her Calle del Pajarito home. Angel and Aaron Garcia, Angel Garcia’s boyfriend Aaron Archuleta, and Archuleta’s younger brother and sister — Anthony, 13, and Leann, 16, — were all watching a movie when the incident occurred, around 4 p.m., Angel Garcia said.
“All of a sudden I heard the gun go off and I saw him literally jump up, say, “S..t,” and just fall down,” Angel Garcia said. “My guess is he did not expect to get shot because why else would somebody say, ‘S..t’?”
Garcia’s mother Leann Baca spent the morning and afternoon with her son, and dropped him off at his sister’s house after the two had lunch at Big Rock Casino. She said she knew he wanted to go shooting coyotes and rabbits, using a pistol she bought off the street.
“He’s very familiar with guns,” Baca said. “In his room right now it looks like an army in there. He’s got bullets, things to make bullets, guns, everything.”
Angel Garcia said Archuleta wrestled the gun away from Garcia earlier in the afternoon because he didn’t like him handling it “out in the open.”
In the moments after the shooting, Aaron Archuleta and his sister tried to control the bleeding, Angel Garcia said, while she called 911.
“Leann was cleaning all the blood off my brother’s face, because when he fell down all the blood went in his eyes,” Angel Garcia said.
Garcia died at the scene, according to his family and Lopez.
“If you got to know my son, he was polite, energetic, he stepped in and helped his younger sister with her homework and made sure she went to school,” Leann Baca said.
In May, Garcia found the dead body of his best friend, Manuel Archuleta, in the Rio Grande bosque near the Española seventh grade school on Hunter Road, according to a police report. Archuleta’s death was ruled an accidental drug overdose by the state Office of the Medical Investigator.
Garcia graduated from Española Valley High School a year earlier, at 17, according to his sister and mother, and subsequently worked as a roofer for David Espinoza. He loved hunting, fishing, camping and his two dogs: Diabla, a graduation present, and Zeus.
“It didn’t matter where he was at, he would always call and tell me, ‘I love you Mom,’” Leann Baca said.