The manhunt is on for the suspect in the murder of a UNM baseball player outside a Nob Hill club. Darian Bashir has a long criminal record, and he had been let out of jail not long before the murder.

This was the third violent incident the suspect has been accused of after the bars along Central Avenue close. Meanwhile, students remain on edge waiting for the accused killer to be captured.



Friday, police filed a criminal complaint identifying 23-year-old Darian Bashir as the man who shot and killed UNM baseball player Jackson Weller. The student was killed early just after 2 a.m. on Saturday outside Last Call, the late-night burrito restaurant next to Imbibe in Nob Hill.

Police say Weller was in a fight with someone other than Bashir when Bashir pulled out a gun and shot him. They say the murder was captured on surveillance video. Now, it’s unclear where Bashir is, but police say they are working to track him down.

“They are diligently following every lead and we will get it right,” Lt. Scott Norris said.

KRQE News 13 also found a video of Bashir in a fist fight with another teen from about eight years ago. Police say they’ve been all over his social media, in several of which he’s seen flashing gang signs and holding guns.

A friend of the Bashir family says he’d recently gotten in trouble with the law in Arizona and had been running around with a bad crowd in Albuquerque.

It’s not the first time Bashir has been accused of shooting someone outside a Central Avenue bar after closing time. Court records show he had one shooting case dismissed, and a judge let him out on the other.

It was in November 2017, police say Bashir shot a man in the stomach after getting into an argument with him in the parking lot for talking to a woman at Lotus nightclub. It happened near Central and Second Street after the downtown Albuquerque bars closed.

Court documents show that case was dismissed earlier this year because the state didn’t get evidence to the defense on time and did not get witnesses interviewed on time.

In February, he was slapped with another aggravated battery charge, accused of shooting at another vehicle and almost hitting officers who were on a call near San Mateo and Kathryn. He was arrested, but District Court Judge Richard Brown ruled Bashir wasn’t a danger to the public, and in March denied the state’s request to hold him until trial.

Had Bashir’s case not been dropped, he would have gone to trial this past March and may have been in prison before last weekend’s deadly shooting. The District Attorney says he will ask the legislature to overhaul the rules for pretrial detention in the next session.

UNM planned to honor Jackson Weller at Friday night’s Lobo baseball game, the first since the murder, but it was canceled due to the rain. So, on Saturday, a tailgate honoring Weller will be held next to the Lobo baseball field starting at 11 a.m. Then, the team will take on UNLV at 1 p.m. following a celebration of Weller on the field. The public is invited to both.

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