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.