Jul. 5—Police say a dispute between neighbors ended when one man struck another with his vehicle — killing him — earlier this year in Southwest Albuquerque.
Gabriel Guerrero, 18, is charged with an open count of murder and tampering with evidence in the May 25 death of Nathaniel Besel, 36.
Guerrero has been booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. It is unclear from court records who his attorney is.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court:
Officers responded sometime after 7 p.m. to the Diamond Mesa apartment complex and found Besel fatally injured and covered in road rash. An autopsy later found his neck had been broken in two places leading to “internal decapitation and instant death.”
Witnesses, including Besel’s boyfriend, told police he was in his garage when he confronted some neighbors about the smell of “fentanyl smoke.” The argument escalated to threats before the neighbors and Besel left the area.
A separate neighbor told police he saw two women and a man attack Besel in the parking lot, but Besel was able to fight the trio off and they fled. Besel’s boyfriend told police Besel came back to the apartment bloodied, with photos of an alleged attacker’s vehicle, a silver Honda, and one of their cellphones that was dropped in the fight.
The boyfriend told police Besel left on foot to look for his attackers before two women came to the apartment looking for the cellphone. A doorbell camera caught Besel being struck from behind by a silver Honda “at high speed,” and evidence showed the driver “swerved to hit him intentionally.”
Besel’s boyfriend turned over the attacker’s phone to police and detectives found photos of Besel’s apartment address and his vehicle at the complex. Photos of the Honda taken by Besel captured the license plate, which came back to Guerrero.
Last Friday, police spoke with one of the women who argued with Besel initially, and she retold the story of the dispute and leaving the complex. The woman said her mother and sister went back to the complex but she stayed home, leaving her phone in their vehicle.
The woman told police her boyfriend Guerrero was trying to reach her and traced her phone’s location, finding her mother and sister arguing with Besel. She told police Besel punched Guerrero and a fight broke out before everyone left, with Guerrero alone in his silver Honda.
Officers went to Guerrero’s work and found the silver Honda backed into a space. The wheels “were now black,” a front plate had been removed and the right front panel appeared “crooked and the color (did) not match the rest of the vehicle.”
“This is the vehicle used to kill Nathaniel Besel, but has been given some cosmetic changes to change the appearance,” a detective wrote in the complaint.
