ALBUQUERQUE - A federal jury sitting in Santa Fe, N.M., returned a verdict late this afternoon finding Federico Lujan, 26, of Serafina, N.M., guilty on assault and firearms charges after a four-day trial, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Steven C. Yarbrough, Special Agent in Charge DuWayne W. Honahni, Sr., of District IV of BIA’s Office of Justice Services, and Chief Kevin Mariano of the Isleta Pueblo Tribal Police Department.
Lujan, a non-Indian man, was arrested on July 5, 2012, on a criminal complaint alleging aggravated assault charges arising out of the discharging of a rifle while threatening and menacing two Isleta Pueblo women and ten children in an Isleta Pueblo residence. Lujan subsequently was indicted and charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
Trial of this case began on Feb. 18, 2014, and concluded late this afternoon when the jury returned a verdict of guilty on all three counts of the indictment. The trial evidence established that on the morning of July 5, 2012, Lujan drove to the victims’ residence armed with a.22 caliber rifle loaded with a high-capacity magazine carrying almost 50 rounds of ammunition. After Lujan got out of his vehicle with the loaded rifle, one of the two adult victims peered out the window to see a stranger with a rifle standing in her yard. The adult victim heard shots fired as she ran to get the children who were in the residence to safety.
While one adult victim stayed in the home to protect the ten children who were present, the other adult victim went outside to try to defuse the situation. While speaking to Lujan, she learned that Lujan was shooting outside the residence because he believed that someone had taken his baseball cap from him the night before and that the cap was inside the residence. When the victim denied knowing about the baseball cap, Lujan pointed the rifle at her, threatened to kill her, and fired his rifle again but did not hit the victim. As Lujan drove away, the victim got the license plate number for Lujan’s vehicle. Lujan was arrested shortly thereafter by tribal police officers who were responding to a call from the victims. Following the arrest, the officers found a rifle in Lujan’s vehicle.
The jury deliberated approximately four and a half hours before returning its guilty verdict.
Lujan was remanded into custody after the jury returned the guilty verdict and will remain detained pending his sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. At sentencing, Lujan faces up to 18 months in prison on each of the two aggravated assault charges. Lujan also faces a mandatory ten years in prison for discharging a firearm which must be served consecutive to any prison sentence imposed on the assault charges.
This case was investigated by the Southern Pueblos Agency of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services and the Isleta Pueblo Tribal Police Department, with assistance from the Albuquerque office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI’s crime lab in Quantico, Va., and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark T. Baker and Holland S. Kastrin.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
