Prosecutors are asking a judge to keep Gerald Trujillo in jail pending trial for the alleged shooting death of his friend Nov. 15 in the Ohkay Casino parking lot.
A combined dangerousness and preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 4. Prosecutors wrote in court documents filed Nov. 18, that the hearing should last about three hours. These hearings are like mini-trials, where a judge hears all the evidence and determines if someone is dangerous or not, determines if there is a way to release them safely and what, if any, charges should be bound over to district court.
Trujillo, 21, of Española, is accused of shooting Elias Tiberi, 21, of Jemez Springs, in the head after the two did a line of cocaine together and Trujillo took out a pistol that he started waving around.
New Mexico State Police Investigator Mario Villanueva initially charged Trujillo with involuntary manslaughter before increasing the charge to second degree murder.
In his motion to hold Trujillo as a danger, prosecutor Kent Wahlquist wrote that Trujillo “poses a danger of extreme physical harm” to the community.
“The Defendant’s drug use and cavalier attitude toward firearm safety show that the Defendant is likely to commit a new crime,” he wrote.
Past court cases for Trujillo are for reckless driving, careless driving and speeding 26 to 30 miles over the limit.
He is charged with two counts of tampering with evidence and one count each of second degree murder and negligent use of a deadly weapon in Tiberi’s death.
He turned himself in following the shooting, according to a New Mexico State Police press release.
The narrative of the shooting comes from their friend, who was present that night. He witnessed the shooting and then immediately told a security guard what happened, Villanueva wrote in an amended affidavit for an arrest warrant.
According to the witness’s account, as recounted by Villanueva, Trujillo and Tiberi did a line of cocaine in Trujillo’s car and then Trujillo pulled out a pistol and started waving it around.
Initially, when Villanueva charged Trujillo with manslaughter, he wrote that Trujillo waved around the pistol toward the roof, both Trujillo and Tiberi were laughing as Tiberi said “No, no, no” and as Trujillo was handling the gun, it went off, shooting Tiberi in the head.
In an amended complaint, charging Trujillo with second degree murder, Villanueva expanded on the witness’s narrative, writing that Trujillo pointed the pistol at Tiberi multiple times, Tiberi pushed the gun away, there was a struggle over the gun and Tiberi was “more actively tempting (sic) to push the firearm away from himself” before the fatal shot, Villanueva wrote.