New Mexico
Homicide victim was 78-year-old woman
Virginia Montoya, 78, and her husband, Adan Lucero, 84, were sitting in their home Wednesday night in the 1300 block of Traver Street. They were watching television. The doorbell rang. Montoya got up to answer it.
“JR, is that you?” she can be heard telling a man dressed in a light gray hoody with a dark mask over his face. “Leave!”
Moments later, Lucero tells police, he heard a loud pop. “Virginia sat down on the love seat by the door and told (her husband) she had been shot,” court records show.
JR, police believe, was Dan Lucero, the grandson of Adan Lucero. His mother told police “JR has mental health issues.” She also said her son is using meth. And he “does not care for Virginia.”
It wasn’t immediately clear why Dan Lucero allegedly did not care for Montoya, but authorities arrested him early Thursday morning and charged him with first-degree murder after Montoya died from the single gunshot to the right side of her chest.
Lucero, 36, was being held in the Curry County Detention Center this weekend without bond.
Police responded to the scene just before 7 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a 911 call reporting the shooting.
There they found Montoya lying on a love seat. She ceased breathing while being treated by first responders and was pronounced dead at the Clovis hospital.
Home security video from the victim’s residence and others in the neighborhood captured the shooting and gave police evidence a white truck like the one Dan Lucero drives was seen leaving the neighborhood at a high rate of speed.
Adan Lucero told police Dan Lucero was supposed to come to the house earlier in the day, but Adan Lucero had not seen him.
Police located Dan Lucero and his mother at a home in the 4100 block of Cottonwood Drive on Wednesday night. Both were taken to police headquarters, where Lucero declined to answer questions, court records show.
Dan Lucero’s mother said her son had come home about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and started a load of laundry. He told her something was wrong with his truck, so he had parked it at a shop in the 700 block of Pioneer, where police located it, along with evidence they believe ties Dan Lucero to the shooting.
The suspect was initially held on an undisclosed probation violation and jailed early Thursday morning. Probation officers had been to his home on Wednesday afternoon where he was “distracted, somewhat upset and told them his grandfather (Abe Sena) had just died,” court records show.
Online court records show criminal allegations – for violent crimes and multiple drug charges — against Dan Lucero began in 2010. Prior to Wednesday’s shooting, he was most recently charged with battery against a household member about a year ago. He pleaded no contest to that charge, was sentenced to 364 days in jail, and was released in July.
Montoya’s slaying marked Clovis’ fourth homicide this year. Two women were killed in Ned Houk Park in May and a teenager was shot to death outside the Clovis Apartments early last month.
The Ned Houk suspect is in custody in Albuquerque where he faces multiple federal charges. The suspect in the September slaying, Giovanni Brown-Johnson, 18, remained at large this week, police said.
Police are responding after a hot air balloon caught on fire in Albuquerque Saturday.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Police are responding after a hot air balloon caught on fire in Albuquerque Saturday. No one was injured.
The balloon caught on fire and landed near Fourth Street and Mildred Avenue NW.
Albuquerque fire crews are on scene and the fire is out.
Details are limited. Stay with KOB 4 Eyewitness News and KOB.com for updates.
Construction is underway on New Mexico’s first dental school, and it’s expected to fill more than a few cavities.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Construction is underway on New Mexico’s first dental school, and it’s expected to fill more than a few cavities.
“We need more dentists and hygienists, and so the best way to do that is sort of grow your own,” said Mayor Tim Keller.
The most recent data puts us well below the national average. While state leaders could recruit dentists from other states, they know it’s easier to train them right here in New Mexico.
“People are always surprised to find out that there’s no dental school in Albuquerque or in New Mexico,” said Keller.
After 40 years of unsuccessful attempts, those days are finally coming to a close. City and state leaders broke ground on the Touro College of Dental Medicine’s newest campus in southeast Albuquerque.
“We’re putting a clinical campus for our dental school at the Loveless Biomedical Research Institute,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro University.
The $40 million expansion project is expected to train up to 200 dental students at a time with at least 100 state-of-the-art training chairs.
College leaders say space is limited, so students will have to begin their training at Touro’s New York campus, but will finish in Albuquerque — and that’s the point.
“People who go to professional schools, dental school, medical school, tend to practice where they train not 100% of the time, but a significant amount of the time. And so the absence of a dental school in New Mexico means that fewer people will choose to practice there,” said Kadish.
One homegrown dentist knows that’s true.
“I think there’s about, like, 50% of my classmates that were from Albuquerque that didn’t end up coming back,” said Dr. Alyssa Candelaria, with Uptown Dentist Associates.
Candelaria is a Volcano Vista and UNM grad, but she had to move to Nebraska to go to dental school, even though she didn’t really want to.
“100% I would have wanted to stay here in state,” said Candelaria.
She knows she’s not alone.
“We actually have an assistant here who is, like, very interested in dental school. I think she’d be a great dentist, but she doesn’t want to leave the state,” Candelaria said. “I think if there was a dental school here, I think we have a lot more opportunity for other people to pursue that option.”
City and state leaders are hoping more aspiring dentists do. There’s only 48 dentists per 100,000 people in New Mexico, well below the national average of 60 dentists.
“It’s become increasingly clear that overall survival and feeling healthy is contributed to by dental health,” said Kadish.
Making New Mexico healthier, one new dentist at a time.
“I think it’s going to be really good for just a patient population here in general,” said Candelaria.
The new Touro Dental School is supposed to be up and running by next summer.
Keller predicts we could see the first batch of homegrown dentists within 18 months.
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