Just after midnight Friday, a gunshot detection device picked up gunfire near the dorms on the University of New Mexico campus. Around an hour later, UNM police got a call about an alarm and found broken windows and blood on the rooftop of Mesa Vista Hall.
It wouldn’t be until 2:30 a.m. — after a UNM gateway student showed up to the hospital with a gunshot wound — that officers would discover the body of 14-year-old Michael Lamotte in the student’s dorm.
Lamotte, who attended Rio Rancho High School, had been shot in the head.
It is unclear what immediate actions were taken by authorities in response to the apparent gunfire detection and property damage — but an investigation by New Mexico State Police would allegedly tie it all to John Fuentes.
Fuentes, who was arrested by State Police in Los Lunas after an hourslong search, is charged with an open count of murder, aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and tampering with evidence. The 18-year-old has been booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
Court records filed in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court shed light on the shooting, which captured headlines and sent UNM into a lockdown as hundreds of incoming students were staying in the dorms for orientation — preparing to start their college careers in August.
What is unclear in court records and has not been stated by authorities is any motive related to the incident. One young man in the dorm room told police Fuentes “appeared to be on drugs” when he suddenly shot Lamotte in the head.
“This behavior is egregious, unjustified, and extremely dangerous,” prosecutors wrote in a motion seeking to detain Fuentes until trial. “The Defendant showed no regard for the life and safety of others.”
The Fuentes family could not be reached Saturday.
The incident marked the second high-profile shooting on the UNM campus in recent years.
In 2022, New Mexico State basketball player Mike Peake killed UNM student Brandon Travis during a shootout outside the dorms. Travis and his friends attacked Peake over a grudge stemming from a fight at a football game.
Peake, who was injured, was never prosecuted in the case, as it was ruled self-defense, but Travis’ accomplices were charged.
Friday’s incident appeared to be more random.
State Police say surveillance video showed Fuentes drove onto campus around 8 p.m. and parked outside the Casas del Rio dormitory, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Metropolitan Court. Fuentes was seen meeting with another teen in the parking lot.
The teen Fuentes met had a dorm leased at UNM and was enrolled in the college’s Gateway Program, described as “for first-time, first-year students from New Mexico who do not immediately meet UNM’s freshman admission requirements.”
Police said at 10:20 p.m., the two were joined by Lamotte and his half-brother before all four walked toward the Gila dormitory. After the student showed up to the hospital and officers discovered Lamotte’s body, his half-brother identified Fuentes as the shooter.
The teen told police they had been playing video games in the student’s dorm when Fuentes shot his half-brother in the head and also shot the student, wounding him, according to the affidavit. Police said evidence showed Fuentes fled toward his vehicle but then got onto the roof of Mesa Vista Hall.
Police said Fuentes smashed multiple windows, cutting himself in the process, before being picked up by someone in a truck around 1:40 a.m. Officers found an extensive blood trail on the roof, along with a handgun, keychain and a pair of jeans.
State Police used license plate readers to track Fuentes to Los Lunas around 2:30 p.m., where he was pulled over and detained somewhere along N.M. 314, the affidavit states. At the time the affidavit was written, around 9 p.m. Friday, Fuentes had “not yet been interviewed.”