.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Justin Brouillette walked up to the door of their Southeast Albuquerque apartment, Elizabeth and Keith Mallory assumed he was hungry and let him in.

Brouillette was hungry. But he was also on the run from the law.

“He came into the kitchen, and I saw the gun,” Elizabeth Mallory said. “So I said, ‘Honey what you gonna do with that gun?’ ”

ADVERTISEMENTSkip

................................................................

Elizabeth Mallory said that when Brouillette, 21, held the gun against her stomach, she grabbed the barrel and took it from him. She passed it to her husband, Keith, and he dropped it in the mailbox outside their door.

Brouillette began crying in the corner, so she walked out the door and told officers who were searching her neighborhood what had happened.

Keith Mallory said he made Brouillette a salad and gave him some water. He also tried to persuade Brouillette to give himself up.

“He said, ‘I’m not going back to prison,’ ” Keith Mallory said. “I told him I’d be back and went out the door.”

Brouillette’s trouble started around 1:30 p.m. when he fired multiple shots at two officers as he fled from them during a traffic stop near Alcazar and Zuni SE, said officer Tanner Tixier, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department. The car he was driving didn’t have a license plate.

No officers were hit in the shooting, and no officers fired their weapons, he said.

Brouillette then “turned west on Zuni at a high rate of speed and ran a red light, striking a small Ford in the middle of the intersection,” Tixier said.

He crashed his car into the curb and tried to steal the Ford, but it was too damaged from the wreck, so he ran into a neighborhood near Zuni and Louisiana SE, Tixier said.

“He fired additional rounds at our officers and fled in a southwest direction into the neighborhood behind Church’s Chicken,” Tixier said.

As officers were setting up the perimeter, he forced his way into one home and then another, he said. The second, in the 400 block of Kentucky SE, was the Mallorys’.

“He forced his way into one home and changed clothes,” Tixier said. “We constricted the perimeter a little bit, then got approached by a second homeowner saying he forced his way into her home.”

The SWAT team was called to negotiate with Brouillette, who was wanted on four felony warrants, one for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Tixier said.

Officers were trying to communicate with the Brouillette over a loudspeaker.

“You are not going anywhere, Justin,” they said. “Come out through the front door with your hands up.”

He was taken into custody around 4:30 p.m.

Emerson Elementary School, two blocks away, was locked down during the standoff, and parents were asked to pick up their children because buses weren’t able to, according to Albuquerque Public Schools. APS police assisted with directing traffic.

Jesus Pena, who works at a tire shop at Louisiana and Zuni, said he saw the suspect shoot at officers.

“We were inside and I heard someone shooting. I came outside after that and heard the crash,” Pena said. “Then I saw a guy shooting at the cop.”

He said the officer was behind the Ford, which was in the middle of the street, and a thin, white man fired at the officer and then started running.

Brouillette’s criminal record includes four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon from early February; the case is moving through the 2nd Judicial District Court.

He also pleaded guilty to possessing a controlled substance in March, and a bench warrant was issued July 1 after he violated his parole, according to court records.

Elizabeth Mallory said that she always helps strangers, but that she won’t be so quick to open her door in the future.

“The way he was shaking and acting after he got in, Lord help me,” she said. “If I would have panicked, or my husband would have panicked, we would’ve been dead today.”

Journal staff photographer Roberto E. Rosales contributed to this report.