Albuquerque man charged in another murder
Mar. 29—A 25-year-old man is accused of killing three people in less than two weeks in separate shootings across Albuquerque.
Gabriel Valenzuela-Greene Jr. was charged Friday with an open count of murder and tampering with evidence in the March 13 death of Donte Barnes, 31.
Valenzuela-Greene is already facing two open counts of murder, among other charges, in the March 4 death of Jacob Rivera, 24, and March 13 death of 29-year-old Lawrence Zamora.
Zamora was killed hours after Barnes.
Valenzuela-Greene was arrested on March 15 and is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
His attorney could not be reached Friday.
Police responded around 4 p.m. to a shooting outside Twisters Burgers and Burritos on Menaul NE, near University. Officers found Barnes with gunshot wounds, and he died at the hospital.
Witnesses told police a man walked up to Barnes in the parking lot and, after a brief conversation, shot him, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Police pieced together footage from several surveillance cameras that showed the shooter removing clothes as he fled the scene.
The next day, the bullet casings from the scene came back as a match to those found at the scene of Zamora's death hours earlier, according to the complaint. The accused shooter in the deaths of Zamora and Rivera was said to go by "Memphis," which police learned was an alias of Valenzuela-Greene.
Police said cellphone tower data showed Valenzuela-Greene's phone was pinging in the area of Barnes' killing when the homicide occurred. The suspect seen in the surveillance footage matched Valenzuela-Greene's facial and physical descriptions.
Two people who knew Valenzuela-Greene picked him out of a photo lineup as the suspect who went by "Memphis" on the streets, according to the complaint.
