A 35-year-old Ojo Caliente man pleaded guilty to shoplifting, receiving a stolen firearm and possession of methamphetamine in a global plea deal on Oct. 7.
Esteban Lucero pleaded guilty to the three charges, spread across two cases, one each in Los Alamos and Rio Arriba counties.
According to his plea deal, he will be on supervised probation for three-and-a-half years, he will receive a conditional discharge and he must apply to drug court.
A conditional discharge means the proceedings in the case are suspended and, while he pleaded guilty, he hasn’t been adjudicated as guilty. His conditional discharge could still be revoked, were he to violate his probation, and he would be sentenced in the two cases.
Prosecutors dismissed five additional charges as part of the plea deal.
In the Rio Arriba County case, Española City Police Officer David Jaramillo wrote that he arrested Lucero Jan. 3 outside of Walmart in Española. He wrote he was called to Walmart by an employee who said a person he had been looking for the day prior was back at the store.
When he arrived, staff was watching Lucero walk through the store, then check out at self checkout without scanning every item. Jaramillo wrote he had another officer stop Lucero as he walked out of the store.
The officer asked Lucero which car was his and he allegedly responded that he was in a vehicle parked in the handicapped space with no required plaque, he wrote.
Lucero was allegedly trying to use credit cards that were reported stolen after the car they were in was stolen, Jaramillo wrote.
When officers searched his car in the handicapped parking space, they found what they assumed to be fentanyl, he wrote.
In the Los Alamos case, he was pulled over for reckless driving and an officer believed he was high. During the stop, Officer Kirk Williamson spotted a “loaded sub machine gun” on the passenger floorboard and ordered Lucero out of the car at gunpoint, he wrote.
Inside his car, officers found what Lucero told them was a baggie of methamphetamine, suspected fentanyl pills and bullets in the trunk. While he was charged for possessing a stolen gun, Williamson did not write who the gun belonged to, if it had ever been reported as stolen or what type of gun, exactly, it was.