An 18-year-old Albuquerque man told police he deliberately chose his victim from available Uber drivers before fatally shooting the driver and stealing his car early Thursday morning.
According to court documents reviewed by nm.news, police tracked the Uber driver’s vehicle to a home near off of Dennis Chavez Blvd. SW where they located Sheliky Sanchez and his girlfriend. The girlfriend told police that sometime after 2:00 a.m., Sanchez had asked her to request an Uber rideshare to take him to an address she did not recognize then later returned to pick her up in a Ford Escape he said he had purchased, though she believed it was stolen.
Police say he later agreed to speak with them without an attorney. During that interview, Sanchez allegedly told police he “filtered through several Uber drivers and picked out the Uber driver that he wanted” then loaded a gun before the driver arrived. Sanchez told police he shot the driver multiple times after arriving at the drop-off location in a neighborhood near Coors Blvd and Central Ave SW. Just after 3:00 a.m., APD responded to a gunshot detection call at that location and located the victim deceased from gunshot wounds.
A detective wrote that Sanchez said he wanted to “let some steam off due to so much stress and so much bullshit” and couldn’t “take it out on certain people, so he wanted to take it out on anybody he could see or find.”
“I felt bad for him a little bit, but just getting that satisfaction out, out of the way. It’s like a relief. Like taking an in and out breath,” Sanchez added, according to police.
A prosecutor with the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office told a judge during Sanchez’s Saturday morning hearing that they intended to file a motion for pre-trial detention to keep Sanchez held prior to trial.
The case remains under investigation by the Albuquerque Police Department’s Homicide Unit.
