New Mexico police arrested a failed candidate for the state legislature in connection with a string of recent shootings that appeared to be targeting prominent local Democratic officials.
The Albuquerque Police Department used a SWAT team to apprehend Solomon Peña, who allegedly conspired with and paid four men to carry out the shootings, NBC News reports.
"It is believed that he is the mastermind behind this," Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said at a press conference on Monday.
Police said they were able to make the arrest in part based on ballistic evidence, according to NBC.
“I know for us, APD essentially discovered what we had all feared and what we had suspected,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller added on Monday in a press conference. “These shootings were indeed politically motivated.”
The shootings, which allegedly began in December and continued through January, allegedly targeted a combination of homes and offices belonging to two current and former Bernalillo County commissioners, as well two state senators. No one was injured in the apparent attacks.
“It is traumatizing to have several bullets shot directly through my front door when my family and I were getting ready to celebrate Christmas,” commissioner Adriann Barboa, who has been a county commissioner since January 2021, told Albuquerque TV station KRQE in December. “No one deserves threatening and dangerous attacks like this.”
“The evidence we have is not only firearms, it’s also cell phones and electric records, surveillance video and multiple witnesses inside and outside this conspiracy that have helped us weave together what occurred,” Kyle Hartsock, deputy commander of Albuquerque Police’s Criminal Investigations Division, said on Monday. “On the last shooting, we now have evidence too that Peña himself went on the shooting and actually pulled the trigger on at least one of the firearms that was used.”
Mr Peña, 39, has a previous criminal record, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, of 19 felonies including burglary, larceny, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and receiving stolen property.
He ran on a hard-right platform and lashed out at what his campaign website describes as the “multifaceted global forces of erosion such as globalization” and “the demonic theories of the Globalist Elites and their foreign counterparts.”
It is unclear if Mr Peña has legal representation yet or how he will plead to the allegations against him.
