A 16-year-old boy in New Mexico allegedly killed four members of his family and then turned himself in while drunk on Saturday, investigators said.
New Mexico State Police said in a Facebook post that the teenager was arrested in Belén, a small town in Valencia County, after calling authorities late at night and telling them he had killed his family.
When police arrived, the boy — identified as Diego Leyva — walked out of his home with his hands in the air and in an “extremely intoxicated” state, according to a statement from investigators. Inside the home, officers said they found a gun on the kitchen table and the bodies of the deceased family members.
New Mexico State Police said they arrested Levya and booked him as an adult on four counts of murder. He was also taken to a hospital to undergo detoxification while investigators and crime scene technicians prepared to interview him, police added.
Members of Valencia province expressed a sense of disbelief on Sunday after learning the identity of the accused killer. One of his former teachers said she did not believe one of her students would have carried out such a heinous act.
“I never thought something like this would happen and that Diego would be capable of something like that,” Vanessa LaGrange told the Guardian. “Everyone is in shock.”
The identities of the victims were not immediately released Sunday. However, according to LaGrange, one of the victims is believed to be a student at a high school where other students plan to wear black and bring balloons to mourn.
Meanwhile, Valencia County Fire Chief Matt Propp said: “We have every reason to believe one of the victims is a volunteer firefighter.”
The murders that occurred Saturday were consistent with the type of crime that has been called a “family destruction” since the 1980s. Saturday’s killings were the 29th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to statistics from the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass killing as one in which four or more victims are killed.
There is no centralized database of family destruction that could provide insight into the characteristics or prevalence of these types of crimes. But the vast majority of such cases involve a male killer, armed with a gun, who commits suicide after killing several close family members.
Local communities typically treat such cases as isolated tragedies, although a 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation found they had occurred on average once every five days in the U.S.
The annual high number of mass shootings and mass killings in the U.S. has prompted some in the country to call for more substantive federal gun control. But Congress is unable or unwilling to implement such measures.
