New Mexico AG charges police officer in fatal shooting of Black man at gas station

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — New Mexico Attorney General  Raúl Torrez announced this week that a police officer was charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting of a Black man at a gas station last summer.

Las Cruces Police Department officer Brad Lunsford was taken into custody on Tuesday, Torrez said at a news conference in Las Cruces. Lunsford is accused of fatally shooting Presley C. Eze Jr., at a Las Cruces gas station on Aug. 2, 2022.

The officer shot Eze after a gas station attendant called 911 to report that Eze had left the gas station with a beer he did not pay for, according to the attorney general's office. Torrez said Lunsford created an unnecessary escalation of force.

According to an affidavit for the arrest warrant, a second officer, Keegan Arbogast, was also present during the shooting but has not been charged with a crime.

"This was a tragedy that should never have happened. I want everyone to understand that when (Eze) lost his life on the pavement outside that gas station, the original call that came in was for petty theft," said Torrez, who was flanked by members of Eze's family, family attorneys and Bobbie Green, director of the Doña Ana County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Tuesday.

According to Luis Robles, an Albuquerque-based attorney representing the city of Las Cruces in the case, both officers were initially placed on paid administrative leave. But the officers returned to duty after their statements were given to New Mexico State Police, who led the Doña Ana County Officer Involved Task Force that investigated the shooting. The task force is made up of multiple police agencies in the county.

Robles said Lunsford turned himself in on Tuesday, was processed and released. He will be placed back on paid administrative leave following the charges announced on Tuesday.

"The killing of Presley Eze is a tragedy and serves as 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,” Torrez said.

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What happened the day Eze Jr. was killed?

Eze, 36, who was born in Connecticut and lived in southern New Mexico, stopped at a Chevron gas station on the afternoon of Aug. 2, 2022. He wanted a pack of cigarettes.

The clerk asked Eze for an ID. Eze said he did not have it on him, according to police reports, so the clerk refused to sell him the cigarettes. Then, one of Eze's two acquaintances tried to buy the cigarettes on Eze's behalf. Again, the clerk refused. 

Another clerk told police that Eze returned to the store a few minutes later. The second clerk watched as Eze walked over to the beer section, grabbed a tall can of Budweiser and walked out of the gas station. The first clerk, who also noticed Eze, followed him out.

Eze was making his way back to a late-2000s green Pontiac Torrent that he arrived in and the clerk asked Eze from several feet back if he'd paid for the beer — valued at under $5, according to police reports.

The clerk told police that Eze responded by saying, "suck it and pay for it." At that point, the clerks said that the gas station's manager told the clerks to call police.

Lunsford and Arbogast attempted to subdue Eze

According to an affidavit provided by the attorney general's office on Tuesday, Lunsford arrived at the scene in his marked police car and made initial contact with the driver of the Pontiac where Eze was seen shirtless in the passenger seat.

Lunsford began questioning Eze about incident inside the gas station and asked Eze for his identification, according to the affidavit.

Arbogast then arrived at the scene after Lunsford was unable to verify Eze's identity, the affidavit states. Both the officers allegedly forcibly removed Eze from the vehicle to detain him when Eze declined to get out of the car.

When asked by Arbogast to cooperate, Eze replied, "Yes," according to the affidavit. Arbogast removed a closed pocket knife from Eze's lap as Eze was standing up.

Eze said he was not reaching for anything and both hands were visible from the view of Lunsford's body camera. But then a "scuffle ensued," according to the attorney general's office, causing Eze to fall to the ground on top of Arbogast.

During the struggle between the officers and Eze, Arbogast's taser fell from its holster and was on the ground between Arbogast and Eze's right hand. According to the affidavit, Eze had placed his hand on the taser when Lunsford struck him in the face, knocking Eze off balance.

As Eze was on the ground with the taser, which had not been discharged, Lunsford drew his duty weapon and fired a single shot to the left side of Eze's head, killing him.

In an August 2022 news conference following the shooting, former Police Chief Miguel Dominguez said officers had been overpowered by Eze before one of the officers shot him in the back of the head.

Eze's family has since filed a lawsuit against the city. That lawsuit is pending resolution.

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City's attorney responds

Torrez said the next step with the criminal case will be a probable cause determination through either a preliminary hearing or grand jury. But Robles said the arresting documents presented by the attorney general on Tuesday did not include all of the facts.

"The AGs task is not to obtain convictions, but to achieve justice. They are missing exculpatory evidence and that is a concern to me as a lawyer that all of the facts are not presented. The alternative methods of force that could have been used were not going to stop Eze from doing what Officer Lunsford believed him to be doing," Robles said.

Robles said the arresting documents were missing information from initial police reports and officer interviews. He added that Eze tried to unholster Arbogast's duty weapon, but instead unholstered the officer's non-lethal weapon and had his finger on the trigger.

When asked if Lunsford had been accused of using excessive force in the past, family attorney Shannon Kennedy said he had. But due to a confidentiality order involving a civil lawsuit against the city filed in May, Lunsford's disciplinary file could not be discussed.

Jason Groves can be reached at jgroves@lcsun-news.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @jpgroves.