Albuquerque shooting case takes a turn after an unseen witness refused to cooperate with police

When Ann Pierret from KRQE started digging into a late-night shooting on Albuquerque’s West Side, it looked like a pretty simple story on paper.

A young man heard something outside, grabbed a rifle, shot at people on his property, and ended up in handcuffs.

Police said he fired as the trespassers were running away.

Prosecutors called him dangerous.

A grand jury indicted him.

But Pierret’s investigation uncovered a missing piece – a woman in the street that night who refused to talk to police, then later reached out from the shadows and called the shooter a hero.

Her account is now threatening to flip the entire case on its head.

Chaos At 3 A.M. On A Westside Street

According to Ann Pierret’s reporting, everything started in the early morning hours of October 13, 2025, near Central Avenue and 98th Street.

Albuquerque police responded to reports of two people lying in the street.

Officers found a man shot in the leg and a woman with a head injury.

Body camera audio captured the man pointing toward a nearby house and shouting, “That guy right in that house got me!”

The “guy” he was pointing at was 24-year-old Isai Rivas-Torres, standing in his driveway.

Before officers could even question him, Pierret reports that Rivas-Torres yelled back, “I have everything on camera! I have everything on camera.”

Right from the start, he didn’t deny shooting.

He insisted he had the video to show why.

Homeowner Says He Saw Masks, Heard Screams, And Feared For His Family

In her KRQE investigation, Ann Pierret walks through what Rivas-Torres told officers and detectives that night.

Rivas-Torres said his home security cameras alerted him to movement near his trash bins.

On the video, he later explained, he saw two people in masks moving around his property in the middle of the night.

He told an officer, “I pointed the light at both of them to kind of let them know, like, hey, I’m awake, and I’m seeing you guys.”

According to Pierret, the masked trespassers left for a few minutes and then came back.

That’s when Rivas-Torres says everything escalated.

He told police he suddenly heard “very loud screaming like someone was getting hurt” and thought he saw a weapon as people were running by.

In the station interview, recorded and described by Pierret, a detective asked what was going through his head when he pulled the trigger.

Rivas-Torres answered plainly: “Protect my family.”

He also told detectives he’d recently gone through a terrifying attempted break-in when his wife was home alone, and that fear was still fresh.

He insisted, “I didn’t mean harm. I just reacted.”

From a self-defense perspective, that mindset matters.

From a legal perspective, where the bullets were aimed matters even more.

“I Shouldn’t Have Done It” – And A Felony Charge

Rivas-Torres didn’t pretend he’d done everything perfectly.

As Ann Pierret reports, he admitted to officers that he fired as the trespassers were running away, saying, “I shouldn’t have done it, but I decided to take shots.”

That detail is crucial, because under New Mexico law, shooting at fleeing people is very different from shooting in the middle of a direct attack.

While investigators secured the scene, officers moved Rivas-Torres to a substation.

He remained polite and cooperative throughout, even allowing officers to look through his phone to review his own security video, according to Pierret.

Then he learned what he was facing.

An officer told him he’d be charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

Pierret reports that Rivas-Torres broke down, asking, “What am I facing, bro?” and then crying when he heard the answer.

On its face, a homeowner firing on fleeing suspects sounds like a textbook overstep — the kind of case where a DA pushes for prison time to “send a message.”

But this case was never quite that simple.

Prosecutors Call Him A Danger, Brother Calls Him A “Sweetheart”

In court, the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office didn’t just file charges.

As Ann Pierret explains, they also filed a motion to keep Rivas-Torres locked up until trial, calling him a danger to the community.

Assistant District Attorney Collin Brennan argued there was no way to guarantee he wouldn’t do something similar again if he had access to guns.

Brennan pointed out that officers found three firearms in his home and said things like GPS monitors or curfews don’t stop someone from pulling a trigger on their property.

The judge pushed back, asking why a man with no criminal history and no history of missing court should be treated like someone who won’t follow rules.

On the other side, Sergio Rivas, Isai’s older brother, told Ann Pierret that his sibling is the opposite of a menace.

“All he’s done is play his cards right,” Sergio said.

He described Isai as hardworking, a “sweetheart,” a volunteer soccer coach for two kids’ teams, and a professional soccer player like himself.

“He doesn’t even have a speeding ticket,” Sergio told KRQE.

He said watching his younger brother in chains felt surreal: “How is this even possible right now?”

That clash of narratives – dangerous gunman vs. community-minded coach – already made this case complicated.

Then Pierret found the person whose voice was missing from nearly everything the state presented.

The Woman In The Street Who Refused To Talk

Ann Pierret reminds viewers about the woman found in the street with a head injury that night.

Police lapel video recorded her screaming at officers, “Please help me! Why did you help the f**ing perpetrator first?”*

When officers tried to ask what happened, she refused to explain anything.

She asked if they were cops and basically shut down.

According to Pierret, she told them she was afraid of what would happen to her if she talked.

So she stayed silent, got medical help, and disappeared from the official narrative.

At least, that’s how it looked.

Days later, Pierret reports, the woman reached out in a very different way – through the Metro Detention Center’s messaging system.

She sent a message directly to Isai Rivas-Torres.

Her words were blunt: “Were you the one that saved my life and shot the guy who was attacking me… on your property?”

She shared her phone number and agreed to talk privately to the defense team.

That single message turned her from a mysterious, uncooperative witness into potentially the most important witness in the case.

Her Story: A Drug Deal, A Setup, And A Revolver In Her Face

A private investigator met the woman late at night, and Ann Pierret obtained details of what she told him.

The woman said she had gone to the neighborhood for a drug deal.

She admitted she needed rent money, so she agreed to make a “big drop.”

Instead of paying her, she says, the people she was dealing with decided to set her up.

They brought her to Rivas-Torres’s house, telling her a family member lived there and they needed a scale.

Then, she says, everything went violent.

“I bend down to tie my shoe and I look up to a revolver in my face,” she told the investigator.

She said she begged them not to do it, then they “all started to attack” her.

She described getting pistol-whipped and beaten.

Pierret notes that some of that attack can be heard in the home surveillance video Rivas-Torres turned over – including someone calling her a “dumb b***h” as she screams.

The woman told the investigator she was fighting, screaming, and praying that someone would help her.

Then she said the attackers suddenly ran.

They heard something – that something, she believes, was Rivas-Torres firing his rifle.

“I probably wouldn’t be sitting right here,” she said.

Of Rivas-Torres, she told the defense team, “He is a hero. And he deserves to know that. And I’m so sorry that he’s in there.”

In other words, the woman lying bleeding in the street now says the man prosecutors call dangerous saved her life.

Defense-Of-Others, Running Suspects, And The Missing Evidence Fight

Armed with the woman’s statement, defense attorneys Tyler Tuminski and Aaron Mitchell built a defense-of-others argument, as described by Ann Pierret.

Mitchell told the judge, “We’ve got, in my opinion, a very strong defense of others claim.”

Tuminski explained that the law allows someone to take steps to protect another person in danger just as they can protect themselves.

There’s a catch, though.

As Pierret notes, the law also says you’re generally not in danger when someone is running away.

That’s what makes the moment of the shots so critical.

Mitchell argues that the men attacking the woman were still armed and still brandishing a firearm even as they ran off Rivas-Torres’s property.

“They’re still armed, they’re still dangerous,” he said.

From his perspective, firing to stop a fleeing armed group that has just pistol-whipped a woman on your property is still reasonable under those circumstances.

A grand jury did indict Rivas-Torres.

But Tuminski and Mitchell told Ann Pierret that the woman’s interview was not presented to that grand jury.

They believe that omission is grounds to dismiss the case entirely.

The DA’s office disputes that, and a judge is now set to hear arguments on whether the case should go forward.

If the defense is right, a witness who refused to talk to police on day one could end up being the key to exonerating the man who shot her attackers.

ICE, Immigration Stakes, And Larger Questions

The stakes for Isai Rivas-Torres go far beyond one criminal case.

Ann Pierret reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at his latest court hearing.

Rivas-Torres is undocumented.

His attorneys say he had a same-day appointment with an immigration lawyer — instead, he was taken into ICE custody and sent to a facility in El Paso, Texas.

So even as his attorneys fight to clear his name and argue he was defending a screaming woman on his own property, he’s now tangled in the federal immigration system too.

Stepping back, this case touches a lot of raw nerves.

Property crime and drug activity in residential neighborhoods.

Homeowners reacting to fear and past trauma.

Self-defense laws that draw hard lines about when danger ends.

Prosecutors who push for pretrial detention even with no criminal history.

And witnesses who are too afraid of their own exposure to talk to police – but willing to quietly message from the shadows later.

Ann Pierret’s reporting doesn’t claim Rivas-Torres did everything right.

Even he says, “I shouldn’t have done it,” when it comes to firing at fleeing suspects.

But once you hear the woman say, “He is a hero… I probably wouldn’t be sitting right here,” the story stops fitting neatly into the usual boxes.

If the law is going to punish a man who stepped out into the dark, heard a woman screaming, saw masked men on his property, and fired – while at the same time ignoring her testimony that he saved her from being shot – that’s a debate worth having in the open.

And that’s exactly what this next hearing in Albuquerque is going to test.