A Santa Fe man who goes by the street name “Porky” has been accused of attempted murder in a June 27 shooting that critically wounded another man in the parking lot of an auto dealership on Cerrillos Road.
Investigators say in charging documents he shot another man who was running away from him through the parking lot immediately after Porky had escorted the man to a parked blue Honda Accord from the Interfaith Shelter at Pete’s Place. Police believe the victim had stolen a gun from the suspect in recent months.
As of Wednesday evening, according to an online inmate database, police had not arrested suspected shooter Brian Lemus-Baez, a 29-year-old man who was referred to by witnesses as Porky. He faces one count of attempted murder, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday morning in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
An arrest warrant was issued Wednesday for Lemus-Baez, following a dayslong investigation in which detectives connected Lemus-Baez to the car and the crime with surveillance footage and testimony from witnesses. Criminal charges have not been filed against a woman police say accompanied Lemus-Baez during the incident.
The 36-year-old man who was shot and wounded was described by other witnesses as a regular at the shelter.
Police wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit Lemus-Baez appeared in surveillance footage to be searching the area around the homeless shelter just after 5 p.m. on the day of the shooting. After encountering the victim outside the shelter, Lemus-Baez and the man walked over to a blue Honda Accord parked nearby on Harrison Road, the affidavit states.
When they arrived at the car, Lemus-Baez tried to open a door to the backseat, but it was locked, giving the other man an opportunity to “sucker punch” Lemus-Baez before attempting to run away through the dealership parking lot, police wrote.
The surveillance video shows Lemus-Baez chasing the other man for a short distance before pulling what appears to be a gun from his waistband and shooting him once, the affidavit says.
The victim suffered a gunshot wound that entered his upper back and exited his “right neck area,” police wrote. Police and medical staff were dispatched to the scene shortly after a 911 call was received at 5:16 p.m., according to the affidavit, and the man was transported to University of New Mexico Hospital in critical condition.
Although police noted the blue Honda with a “chile license plate” from surveillance footage, and one witness said he saw the shooting occur, investigators could not interview the victim for days after the incident, police wrote. A few tipsters, however, contacted police in the hours and days after the shooting and told detectives about the location of the blue car in a driveway on Siringo Road as well as the connection of the vehicle to two people who, police now suspect, were involved in the shooting, the affidavit says.
Police wrote investigators executed a search warrant on the car and found a live round as well as a Las Vegas Raiders sweatshirt that appeared to have been worn by the shooter in footage of the June 27 incident.
The victim’s father told police in the weeks before the shooting Lemus-Baez had come to his house in Pecos looking for his son, saying he stole a gun from Lemus-Baez, according to the affidavit.
When investigators interviewed the victim days after the shooting, he told them a man named “Porky” had shot him, and a woman named “Jazzy” had been inside the car, police wrote.
Lemus-Baez had escorted the man to the Honda Accord so he could “take him somewhere to kill him,” the victim told police, so he took an opportunity to punch him and attempted to escape.
Investigators noted the Porky moniker — among other nicknames linked to Lemus-Baez — from past police reports involving the suspect, including a 2021 allegation Lemus-Baez attempted to run down a tow truck driver who was attempting to repossess his car. Lemus-Baez faces pending criminal charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and criminal damage to property in that incident.
