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SANTA FE — A man who fired a gun near the city’s Plaza on Monday evening told police he was defending himself from someone in a vehicle who pointed a gun at him around 7 p.m.

Police didn’t cite 30-year-old Musa Nassar, owner of Santa Fe West Gallery, for that shooting near the intersection of Galisteo and West San Francisco streets because he said there had been a threat on his life, Santa Fe Police Capt. Aric Wheeler said.

Nassar turned over his weapon to officers, who are investigating his claim about the vehicle.

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A witness on the scene Monday night described a scary scene of a man in the street firing five or so shots at a car. West San Francisco was blocked off in front of the Lensic Performing Arts Center while the shooting was investigated.

Later Monday night, Nassar was cited for a second shooting with another gun that occurred around midnight at his Sunset Ridge home, Wheeler said. Nassar told police that he believed there was someone outside, because he heard noises and a motion light turned on. He fired shots out of his bedroom window.

Police cited him with misdemeanor negligent use of a firearm, Wheeler said. The captain said police cannot allow people to fire at noises they hear outside.

“We’re not condoning people firing shots out of their bedroom window,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said Nassar was fearful for his and his family’s safety based on threats, but Wheeler did not go into detail on them.

Nassar did not return messages seeking comment for this story. A man whom police asked to turn over a gun at the downtown shooting scene declined to speak to a Journal staffer shortly after the shots were fired Monday night as he and others gathered in a shop near the shooting.

The downtown shooting, which occurred within the heart of Santa Fe’s tourism district, has Kimberly Roman of the Heavenly Boutique on West San Francisco livid.

“I think that’s despicable,” she said of the gunshots. “That’s horrible. … If I was a tourist and I saw shots fired I wouldn’t go back to that part of town.”

Roman said she and her fiance were eating dinner inside the store when the gunshots started. Roman said she looked out her window when she heard a pop and saw a man she recognized as Nassar fire a weapon down the street toward the Plaza. She saw the muzzle flash, ducked behind the counter in her store and heard “repeated” gunshots.

She yelled for her fiance, who was near the front of the store, to get away from the window.

Roman complained about the behavior of police afterward. She said Detective Charles Lujan, who was not wearing a uniform and did not identify himself as an officer, came into the store, told her fiance to “get the (expletive) on the ground” and held him at gunpoint. She said she was afraid that she and her fiance were about to be attacked.

Lujan was joined by other officers, Roman said, and at one point Lujan took her fiance’s cellphone and said he was keeping it as evidence.

The detective said it would be about three weeks before the phone would be returned, Roman said. She said she felt the officer’s actions were “totally inappropriate.”

Wheeler said he did not have information about what happened in the Heavenly Boutique and said the department’s policy on seizing evidence is case-specific. He said he couldn’t speak to the specifics of Roman’s claims about the cellphone but said he would assume Lujan would know what evidence would be relevant in the case.

— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal