Sept. 10 – An Española Valley man has been charged with first-degree murder in a deadly shooting in mid-August along a highway in the small community of Cuartelez outside Española.
Lucas Gomez-Lopez, 36, is accused of killing 41-year-old Marcelino Herrera on the afternoon of Aug. 18, according to charges filed Monday by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
An arrest warrant was issued for Gomez-Lopez on Monday, but a sheriff’s office spokesman said he had not been arrested as of Tuesday and should be considered “armed and dangerous.”
Multiple witnesses identified Gomez-Lopez by his nickname “Pajaro” and told sheriff’s office detectives that he shot Herrera during an argument just as both men were preparing to leave the scene — a vacant lot on NM 76 near the intersection of Eh Ski Vel Lane in Cuartelez — an arrest warrant states.
A witness told officers the men had parked in the parking lot to buy drugs at a nearby house.
Officers dispatched to the scene of Herrera’s killing found five witnesses at the scene and Herrera’s body, with gunshot wounds to both his chest and head, the affidavit said.
Sheriff’s Office detectives interviewed witnesses, including a man who may have left the scene with Gomez-Lopez, and reviewed surveillance footage and data from automatic license plate readers in Española to try to trace the crime back to Gomez-Lopez, the statement said.
A confidential informant told detectives that Gomez-Lopez may have ties to a Mexican drug cartel and that he lived in an arroyo, despite owning a mobile home in Alcalde, the affidavit said.
Several people who witnessed the shooting said Herrera and Gomez-Lopez “exchanged words” in the parking lot, investigators wrote. Herrera had gotten out of his pickup truck and was walking toward Gomez-Lopez’s vehicle when Gomez-Lopez fired “four or five” shots at him, witnesses told investigators, adding that he then drove away with two other people.
According to one person, Herrera had put his hand behind his back, as if he was reaching for a weapon. However, police have not indicated that other weapons were found at the crime scene.
Gomez-Lopez, who also goes by the alias “Yovani,” is charged with tampering with evidence and murder, according to the sheriff’s office.
In recent years, he has been charged with other violent crimes in the region.
Court documents show an arrest warrant issued in May 2023 had not been vacated at the time of the shooting.
He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage to property and resisting arrest. According to a sworn statement, New Mexico police accused him of threatening his former girlfriend and her family members with a knife at a home in Velarde and crashing into the woman’s pickup truck. He also allegedly fled from police in an SUV.
A week later, Gomez-Lopez’s roommates at a home in Valle del Arroyo Seco, south of Española, told police he held them at gunpoint when they told him they couldn’t pay their rent, according to a sworn affidavit. Officers said they found a gun and suspected fentanyl pills in the home, and Gomez-Lopez was charged with drug possession and two counts of resisting arrest.
The criminal case has been transferred to the state court and is expected to be heard in early 2025.
Herrera’s relatives said he lived a “rough life” when he was younger, but that he moved from the Española Valley about a decade ago and started doing better.
He was born in the Northern New Mexico community of Coyote but grew up largely in Española, his sister, Esther Herrera, said in a recent interview. He lived in California for many years but returned to the Española Valley about a month before he was killed.
His sister said he had three children: two sons and a daughter.
