Nov. 27—Santa Fe police believe two young security guards employed by a local business are responsible for a shooting early Tuesday morning that left a man with four gunshot wounds in the parking lot of a restaurant on Cerrillos Road.
The suspects, who the victim claimed were providing security at an Albertsons supermarket hours earlier when he first met them, are charged with attempted murder and other charges. Police accuse the guards of firing “assault rifles” at the victim’s truck, striking the man as he fled from them.
Jair Rascon-Chavez, 21, and Luis Adrian Garcia, 22, both of Santa Fe, were arrested following an investigation into a series of incidents that occurred late Monday night and early Tuesday morning at the Albertsons on Zafarano Drive and the McDonald’s on Cerrillos Road and Richards Avenue, the charging documents say.
One of the suspects told investigators that the pair “tried to intimidate” the victim, a Glorieta man, and his girlfriend, who had been sleeping in their truck in the McDonald’s parking lot, police wrote in a probable cause statement. The affidavit describes a scenario in which the security guards saw the couple sleeping in the truck while passing through the McDonald’s drive-thru after their shift and approached it with their weapons to scare the couple.
The victim woke up and quickly drove away, the document said, prompting the suspects to fire at least six rounds, hitting the man four times.
Police said the victim was hospitalized later Tuesday and was in stable condition. He could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Santa Fe Police Lt. Heinz DeLuca said Rascon-Chavez and Garcia were employed by 1st Defense Security, a Santa Fe-based company. Deputy Chief Ben Valdez confirmed the suspects worked for the 1st Defense.
Representatives for the security company did not return calls or emails requesting comment Wednesday evening. According to the website, the company will launch in 2023. A job posting from 1st Defense Security earlier this year said the company was looking for “armed” security guards.
Abie Rampy, spokesperson for The United Family, parent company of Albertsons and other grocery chains, said in a statement Wednesday: “Our top priority is the safety and security of our guests and team members. The security guards, contracted through a third-party security company, were not on duty and not on site at the time of the incident.”
Rascon-Chavez and Garcia face a range of charges, including attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at or from a motor vehicle and negligent use of a deadly weapon, according to criminal complaints filed Tuesday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
State records show that both Rascon-Chavez and Garcia have active security certification through the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department, but neither is certified to handle a firearm on the job.
An online database shows that “Jair R Rascon” received Level 1 security guard certification in September 2022, and “Luis Adrian Garcia” received Level 2 certification in January. State law requires security guards to have a Level 3 certification to work as armed guards.
Neither Rascon-Chavez nor Garcia had faced a misdemeanor charge before the counts related to this week’s shooting. They had only received tickets for traffic violations or littering.
Allegations of prior threat
The victim told investigators Tuesday that he and his girlfriend were sleeping in his truck at the McDonald’s lot when he woke up and saw the two men “wearing face coverings and ballistic vests, and armed with guns.” He recognized the masked assailants as security guards who had threatened him at the Albertsons hours earlier, police wrote.
A security guard, later identified as Rascon-Chavez, was accused of beating the man with a baton Monday evening and threatening to shoot him.
According to agency logs, a Santa Fe police officer was dispatched to Albertsons on Monday at 9:23 p.m., known as “hot sheets.” The Glorieta man reported that a security guard there “threatened to spray him.” [pepper spray]pushed him from behind and then hit him with a bat,” police wrote in the statement on the probable cause of the shooting. It appears no charges have been filed in connection with these allegations.
The man told the officer that the guard “also threatened him with a gun.”
He was sleeping in his car while waiting for his girlfriend, who was shopping at Albertsons, when he was awakened by a horn, he said, adding that the horn came from “a red car with a security guard on the driver’s seat’. police wrote. The man said he walked into the store and asked a manager if he had called security, but the manager said no. He then parked his truck again and “accidentally hit a tree,” he told the officer, before returning to the store to find his girlfriend.
The man claimed that another security guard inside told him to leave the store “or he would beat him up,” police wrote, and the man “stated that he was surprised and displeased with the manager for not taking action, so he requested a higher or other member of the store. the management staff.” However, he claimed that the security guard hit him on the back of the head with a bat as he walked out of the store.
The security guard followed him outside, he told police, adding that the security guard then retrieved an “AR-style” rifle from his vehicle and held it with the muzzle pointed toward the ground, police wrote.
The man told police after the incident that “the guard was intimidating, which made him think the guard was going to shoot him,” according to the affidavit.
Hours later and several blocks away, he later told police, the same guard fired at him.
Plan to ‘intimidate’
Police wrote that Rascon-Chavez and Garcia drove past the man and his girlfriend on the McDonald’s lot around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Garcia told officers it was “his idea” for the two to “intimidate” the man, so they both put on ski masks and “armored vests” and walked up to the man’s pickup truck with “AR rifles,” the officer wrote Police.
Rascon-Chavez knocked on the man’s car window and told him to “roll down the window so they could talk,” Garcia told investigators, but the man instead backed out of the parking lot and drove down Richards Avenue on. According to the statement, the security guards chased the vehicle. Garcia said he fired five shots at the truck as it sped away, and that Rascon-Chavez fired at least once, police allege.
“Garcia stated that the reason he fired his firearm at the vehicle was to intimidate [the man]”, the police wrote in the statement.
Police confirmed details of the shooting by reviewing surveillance footage from McDonald’s, the statement said.
Officers wrote in the affidavit that they drove to the Albertsons parking lot later Tuesday and saw Rascon-Chavez sitting in his car. They conducted a traffic stop and arrested him, and a “black AR-style rifle and a balaclava” could be seen on the floor of Rascon-Chavez’s backseat, the affidavit said.
Garcia was arrested Tuesday “without incident” during a SWAT team operation at his home on Calle Caballero, police wrote. Both men were arrested Tuesday evening at the Santa Fe County Jail.
Albertsons was packed with customers Wednesday afternoon ahead of Thanksgiving Day, but no security guards were seen inside or outside the store.
