Ervin Joaquin Gutierrez traveled from Roswell to Albuquerque just to cook with his family.
The afternoon of August 27 unfolded like any family gathering: they drank alcohol and prepared green chile enchiladas with his 25-year-old cousin, Nathaniel Cavazos, and another relative. Everything fell apart over a minor detail. Gutierrez, 22, insisted that his sauce was spicier and challenged Cavazos to taste it. The argument escalated until they left the apartment and it turned into a fistfight: Cavazos ended up winning and left his cousin bleeding on the floor.
What came next was wildly disproportionate to what had preceded it. As Cavazos walked away down the hallway of the Copper Hills complex, Gutierrez pulled out a gun and fired three or four times at his back from about three meters away. Police arrived minutes before 11 p.m. and found Cavazos unconscious; he died at the scene. Nine meters from the body, investigators found a gun that did belong to the victim, although witnesses say he never got to use it. Gutierrez was arrested that same night and faces an open murder charge.