ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – When the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office pulled Jose Trujillo on Jan. 3, little did they know that officials were beginning to unravel a case that made national headlines. Trujillo leads them to the man behind the shooting at the home of four democratic politicians.
Albuquerque police announced an investigation into the shooting two days after Trujillo’s arrest. But he wasn’t on their radar yet: Trujillo indicated in a phone call from prison that he was worried he was coming soon.
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Trujillo’s first call from the Metropolitan Detention Center was to his family. He immediately asked her to contact Solomon Peña. “But I have a favor to ask. You need to call your dad, call Solomon, and talk to him about hiring her lawyer,” he told her.
Trujillo made seven calls to three people in two days. He repeated the request to each of them. “We need a lawyer ASAP,” he said to another woman.
He also wanted to know if the police had the right to search his car after his arrest. He asked the women he called to “do research” to find answers. “That’s a lie. And I said to them, ‘No, we can’t do an inventory.’ It felt like the car was already locked and already on the premises, ”trujillo explained.
BCSO pulled Trujillo for expired registration. The lieutenant ran his name and learned that Trujillo had an arrest warrant for failing to appear at court hearings in a stalking case last fall.
An agent took inventory before the car was towed. They told Trujillo that it was a requirement to make sure the tow company didn’t receive anything. What they found revealed why Trujillo was so angry.
“They caught me with 493 beans in one bag and they caught me with 364 beans in another bag,” he told one of the women he called. That’s almost 900 fentanyl pills. Agents also found over $3,000 in cash and his two firearms. It is clear why Trujillo insisted on the legality of the search.
Trujillo: Call Solomon and tell him to deposit the money in my cent.
Woman: Okay.
Trujillo: Yeah, f* stupid registration stickers.
The car belonged to Peña. A phone call proved they knew each other. And one of the confiscated guns broke the APD’s case. A ballistics test linked the Glock to the shooting at the home of State Senator Linda Lopez. The APD said the shooting happened just 40 minutes before Trujillo was stopped.
Investigators believe he was one of four shooters involved in the Peña conspiracy. Trujillo is still in custody, but in federal prison. The FBI took up Trujillo’s case and charged him with possession of a machine gun, possession for the purpose of distributing more than 40 grams of fentanyl but less than his 400 grams, and possession of a firearm to facilitate drug trafficking crimes. .
Peña paid Trujillo’s father, Demetrio, $500 to carry out the shooting, according to APD. In one of the calls Trujillo made from his MDC, he tried to reach his father, but he didn’t answer.
