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Copyright © 2018 Albuquerque Journal

Police say 16-year-old Brandon Caballeros had been hanging out with his friends Sunday night – driving out to the West Side so someone could buy them beer before returning to a mobile home park off Trumbull and Wyoming SE to smoke marijuana.

That’s where the teens were Monday morning when a 15-year-old who owed Caballeros $40 showed up.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, after Carlos Rodriguez told Caballeros he didn’t have money to repay him, the older teen pulled out a handgun and shot the youth in the chest, fatally injuring him.

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Caballeros is charged with murder and tampering with evidence and was booked into the juvenile detention center Monday night. He is being tried as an adult.

He had been taken into custody, along with four other teenagers, around 10 a.m. after police arrived at the Wyoming Terrace-Plaza mobile home park to find Rodriguez with a gunshot wound. Police said the group had carried the teenager from a mobile home to the park’s entrance in order to conceal the crime scene.

Rodriguez, who lived with his family across the street, died a short time later at University of New Mexico Hospital.

By the next day, a memorial of flowers, candles and balloons had cropped up around a tree near the park’s entrance, and several family members and friends gathered to pay their respects throughout the afternoon.

One of those friends, Monique Avalos, 20, said Rodriguez had grown up in the neighborhood with his sisters and was quick to make people laugh or smile. She said he was good friends with her younger brother and many of the other teenagers who lived in the mobile home park.

Avalos said Rodriguez attended a charter school.

A spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Public Schools district said Caballeros had gone to Highland High School before transferring to a charter school last year.

Fatal Encounter

When detectives questioned Caballeros’ friends, they said the group of teenage boys had gotten together the night before the shooting.

One boy said he had picked up Caballeros and another friend and they all hung out at the mobile home before going to find someone to buy them beer, since they are under 21. They said they eventually returned to the mobile home park, where they continued to drink beer and smoke marijuana until they fell asleep.

Early Monday morning, Rodriguez and another friend arrived.

“BC asked the victim if he had the $40 that he had previously loaned him,” the detective wrote in the complaint. “The victim told BC he did not have anything for him. As the victim, CR, was standing near the bed, BC pulled out a handgun pointed at the victim and pulled the trigger, shooting the victim.”

The group of friends decided to take Rodriguez outside and hid the handgun in a cinder block wall, according to the complaint. One neighbor told police that she tried to help them give the youth CPR and realized the wound “appeared to have been cleaned and had little to no blood around it.”

Officers searched the mobile home where they said the shooting occurred and found blood stains on the floor and on the bed and a strong odor of marijuana, according to the complaint.

Several adults in the home Tuesday told the Journal they didn’t want to talk about the shooting.

When detectives interviewed Caballeros he told them he had loaned Rodriguez money two days before the shooting and felt he had been ripped off. He said he had used his .45-caliber handgun to shoot Rodriguez, according to the complaint.

It’s unclear from the complaint where Caballeros got a gun, and police spokesmen did not answer questions about it Tuesday.

Caballeros made his first appearance in Metropolitan Court on Tuesday afternoon as his family watched tearfully from the audience.

The District Attorney’s Office has asked for Caballeros to be held in jail until his trial, citing the seriousness of the crime as well as a “history relating to drug or alcohol abuse, criminal history, and record concerning appearance at court proceedings.” That motion will be heard in the 2nd Judicial District Court.

Neither Caballeros’ family nor his public defender wanted to comment about him or the case.