New Mexico jury convicts former officer in fatal shooting of Black man at gas station
Former Las Cruces Police officer Brad Lunsford looks toward the gallery during his trial in the fatal shooting of Presley Eze, in Las Cruces, N.M., on Feb. 4.
Justin Garcia/Pool Las Cruces Bulletin
SANTA FE, N.M. — A former police officer was found guilty Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man during a 2022 confrontation at a New Mexico gas station.
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Las Cruces police Officer Brad Lunsford’s verdict in a jury trial is the latest outcome in cases that prosecutors have linked to systematic brutality against Black people by members of law enforcement, nearly five years after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Lunsford, who is white, had pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Jose Coronado, said he will ask the judge to review the verdict for its legal sufficiency.
“While I respect the jury’s verdict, I am extremely disappointed in it. I don’t believe the state met its burden,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.
Prosecutors said he shot Presley Eze at point-blank range in a scuffle after police responded to a 911 call from a gas station attendant who reported that Eze stole beer. Eze allegedly placed his hand on a second officer’s stun gun before being shot.
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Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the use of deadly force was not reasonable, noting that Lunsford immediately drew his service weapon and shot Eze in the back of the head.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms a fundamental principle: no one is above the law — not even those sworn to uphold it. Officer Lunsford’s actions were not just a tragic lapse in judgment; they were an egregious abuse of power that cost Presley Eze his life,” Torrez said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
The charge of voluntary manslaughter with a firearms enhancement carries a possible sentence of up to nine years in prison. Evidence at trial included police body camera video of the confrontation, in which police pulled Eze from a vehicle and the struggle ensued.
Philip Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said most fatal shootings by on-duty officers are determined to be legally justified under precedent stemming from two 1980s-era U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
“It is incredibly difficult for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction in a jury trial in one of these cases, and that’s because jurors are very reluctant to second guess the split-second, often life-or-death decisions of an on-duty police officer in a potentially violent street encounter,” Stinson said. “Anything can happen, but it’s only in the most egregious cases.”
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Records compiled by Stinson, university colleagues and students through the Police Integrity Research Group show that 205 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been arrested on criminal charges of homicide or manslaughter over the past 20 years, resulting in 66 convictions, 27 convictions of them for manslaughter or homicide.
“If you do get a conviction, it’s often for the lesser offense,” Stinson said.
More than 900 fatal shootings by on-duty state and local law enforcement officers typically take place each year in the U.S., he said
In pursuing a criminal charge against Lunsford, Torrez described the killing of Eze as a tragedy and “yet another example of poor police tactics resulting in an unjustifiable use of force to subdue an individual resisting arrest for the commission of a minor crime.”
Ex-officer convicted in fatal shooting of Black man at New Mexico gas station
This article is more than 11 months old
Prosecutors said Brad Lunsford, found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, shot Presley Eze at point-blank range in 2022
Associated PressThu 13 Feb 2025 02.14 GMTShare
A former police officer was found guilty on Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of Presley Eze during a 2022 confrontation at a New Mexico gas station.
Brad Lunsford, who is white, had pleaded not guilty in the fatal shooting of Eze, who was Black. The former Las Cruces officer’s attorney, Jose Coronado, said he would ask the judge to review the verdict for its legal sufficiency.
“While I respect the jury’s verdict, I am extremely disappointed in it. I don’t believe the state met its burden,” he said in an email to the Associated Press.
Prosecutors said Lunsford had shot Eze at point-blank range in a scuffle after police responded to a 911 call from a gas station attendant who reported that Eze had stolen beer. Eze allegedly placed his hand on a second officer’s stun gun before being shot.
The state attorney general, Raúl Torrez, said the use of deadly force was not reasonable, noting that Lunsford had immediately drawn his service weapon and shot Eze in the back of the head.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms a fundamental principle: no one is above the law – not even those sworn to uphold it. Officer Lunsford’s actions were not just a tragic lapse in judgment; they were an egregious abuse of power that cost Presley Eze his life,” Torrez said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
The charge of voluntary manslaughter with a firearms enhancement carries a possible sentence of up to nine years in prison. Evidence at trial included police body-camera video of the confrontation, in which police pulled Eze from a vehicle and the struggle ensued.
It is the latest verdict in cases prosecutors have linked to systemic police brutality against Black people, nearly five years after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Philip Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said most fatal shootings by on-duty officers are determined to be legally justified under precedent stemming from two 1980s-era US supreme court rulings.
“It is incredibly difficult for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction in a jury trial in one of these cases, and that’s because jurors are very reluctant to second-guess the split-second, often life-or-death decisions of an on-duty police officer in a potentially violent street encounter,” Stinson said. “Anything can happen, but it’s only in the most egregious cases.”
Records compiled by Stinson, university colleagues and students through the Police Integrity Research Group show that 205 non-federal law enforcement officers have been arrested on criminal charges of homicide or manslaughter over the past 20 years, resulting in 66 convictions, 27 of them for manslaughter or homicide.
“If you do get a conviction, it’s often for the lesser offense,” Stinson said.
More than 900 fatal shootings by on-duty state and local law enforcement officers typically take place each year in the US, he said
In pursuing a criminal charge against Lunsford, Torrez described the killing of Eze as a tragedy and “yet another example of poor police tactics resulting in an unjustifiable use of force to subdue an individual resisting arrest for the commission of a minor crime”.
Charges filed against a New Mexico police officer for a fatal shooting — for the first time in nearly 10 years
A Las Cruces police officer faces a manslaughter charge for killing an unarmed Black man, allegedly over a stolen beer.
by Joshua BowlingOctober 3, 2023
A Las Cruces police officer will face criminal charges for shooting and killing 36-year-old Presley Eze, an unarmed Black man, at a gas station last year, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced Tuesday. The charges mark the first time in nearly a decade that a police officer in New Mexico will stand trial for fatally shooting someone.
Las Cruces Police Officer Brad Lunsford will be charged with voluntary manslaughter, Torrez announced at a morning press conference at the Las Cruces Convention Center, flanked by Eze’s family, the family’s attorneys and the president of the Doña Ana County NAACP. The charge includes a “firearm enhancement” that would increase the penalty from six to 11 years if Lunsford is convicted.
The AG’s Office said that a Las Cruces gas station clerk last August called 911 to report a man stealing beer from the convenience store. Lunsford and Officer Keegan Arbogast responded to the call and, when they arrived, ordered Eze to step out of his car. A struggle ensued and the officers pinned Eze to the ground, authorities say, before Lunsford shot him once in the back of the head. Torrez said his office’s review of evidence, including body-camera footage and police reports, clearly showed the deadly force was “unjustifiable.”
“This was somebody’s son, this is somebody’s brother, this is somebody’s father. He deserves dignity,” Torrez said. The killing has people “rightly concerned about whether or not justice is equal in this country.”
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Lunsford peacefully surrendered to agents with the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office Tuesday morning. Lunsford was released after being booked and is not currently held in jail, Torrez said.
Torrez’s announcement came just weeks after Searchlight New Mexico published an investigation revealing that virtually no police shootings in the state are ever prosecuted, despite the disproportionate number of such incidents statewide.
From 2013 to 2022, only one of the 357 police shootings in the state has led to criminal charges filed against law enforcement officers — a fraction of one percent. In that one case, murder charges were brought against two Albuquerque Police officers who shot and killed James Boyd in the Sandia foothills in 2014. The case ended in a mistrial.
Eze’s family filed a civil lawsuit against Las Cruces in May, claiming the city intentionally “hid” information about the incident that was contained in public records, including police documents and video recordings. The lawsuit alleges that the other responding officer, Arbogast, was the one who shot and killed Eze. Torrez clarified Tuesday that Lunsford fired the fatal shot.
Joe Kennedy, a civil rights attorney representing Eze’s family, said the city’s messy record-keeping presented “a real missed opportunity” to give the family and the public an honest look at how a routine 911 call escalated into a tragic police killing.
A gas station police shooting
It was about 4:45 p.m. on Aug. 2, 2022, when a clerk at the Chevron gas station called the police, saying Eze was stealing beer.
When police arrived, they told Eze, a passenger in a parked car, to step out of the vehicle. Eze, who was shirtless and unarmed, asked the officers why they needed him out of the vehicle, according to the AG’s office. In response, officers forcibly pulled him out of the car, the family’s lawsuit says.
“Suddenly and without warning,” the suit asserts, “police lifted Eze from his feet into the air and body slammed Eze onto the asphalt pavement.”
Eze began to resist. He was pinned to the ground, on top of one of the officers, and put his hand on the officer’s Taser, authorities say. Lunsford then grabbed his handgun and shot Eze once in the back of the head, a killing the family refers to as an “execution.”
“You shoot somebody in the head, you want him dead,” Isaac Eze, Presley’s father, said at the press conference.
After the shooting, police left Eze’s body in the parking lot “to decompose in the hot summer sun” for seven hours, the family asserts.
Bobbie Green, president of the Doña Ana County NAACP, said the shooting was a painful reminder of the state of policing in the United States.
“We cannot have police shoot an unarmed man in the back of the head over beer,” she said.
In New Mexico, police rarely face prosecution
Police in New Mexico are among the deadliest in the nation. Last year, only New York, Los Angeles and Houston police shot and killed more people than the Albuquerque Police Department, Searchlight’s investigation found.
When police in New Mexico shoot someone, police investigate. The probes are carried out by either the New Mexico State Police or a Multi-Agency Task Force composed of several local law enforcement agencies. Critics have likened that approach to letting the fox guard the henhouse.
In the interest of fairness, Torrez has called on the state legislature to fund a permanent team of investigators and prosecutors to probe police shootings, rather than continue to rely on the findings of other police officers.
He used Tuesday’s press conference to stress the importance of “truly, truly, truly independent” investigators and prosecutors while acknowledging the inherent difficulties of prosecuting a police officer. District attorneys and the special prosecutors they hire to review deadly law enforcement shootings often find that they justifiably occurred in the line of duty. That’s because state law says deadly force is justified if the officer “has probable cause to believe he or another is threatened with serious harm or deadly force” while performing his or her job.
“It’s always a difficult thing” to charge officers after they’ve fatally shot someone, Torrez acknowledged, “but it’s necessary.”
Both Lunsford and Arbogast have been involved in other police shootings, according to a review of Las Cruces Police Department records.
In 2014, Lunsford shot at Davalous Brown, a Black man who was fleeing from police, a police report shows. Brown later received a nearly 10-year sentence after being convicted of battery on a peace officer, battery on a household member and false imprisonment.
In 2017, Lunsford also shot a pit bull that he said was attacking him, according to police reports. The dog was later “euthanized due to the injuries,” the reports say.
And in 2019, Arbogast was cleared of wrongdoing in a fatal police shooting. In September 2018, Arbogast and three other officers shot Juan Angel Pinedo to death on the Las Cruces High School campus. Pinedo was fleeing on foot from officers and reached for a handgun in the moments before they fired. The shooting was justified, the 3rd Judicial District Attorney found.
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