The parents of a man Albuquerque police officers fatally shot more than a month ago returned to the City Council chambers Monday night seeking updates from councilors and Mayor Tim Keller’s administration about their son’s case, adding they are still “waiting for justice.”
Fred and Bernadette Garcia, parents of Matthew “Solo” Garcia, showed up to the meeting looking for answers more than a month after they first publicly pleaded with the council and the mayor’s administration.
“We get no answers…it’s not right,” Bernadette Garcia said. “This needs to stop. I don’t want any other families to have to go through what we’re going through.”
While conducting a code enforcement operation at the Tewa Motor Lodge motel on Central Ave NE on Oct. 18, officers shot and killed Matthew Garcia, who was handcuffed in the backseat of a police car, after he admitted having a gun behind his back.
Shortly after the incident, Albuquerque Police Department (APD) Chief Harold Medina released some of the lapel footage of the shooting but said officers needed to be interviewed before more footage was released.
“We are still waiting for the full lapel footage, waiting for APD to admit what they did, waiting for justice,” Fred Garcia said. “How do you explain to a 12-year-old boy that his father is gone because the police panicked? How do you tell a nine-year-old girl that people who are supposed to protect us are the ones who took her dad away?”
Multiple people present during the meeting joined in urging councilors to continue to press Keller’s administration to keep APD accountable for Matthew Garcia’s death and similar incidents. One resident, Rebecca Walkers, asked councilors “to do everything in your power to bring transparency to the shooting of Matthew Garcia.”
“A very simple way that you can do that is to demand that they release at least the three officers that were in and around the squad car at the time of the shooting, at least their three body cams in full,” Walkers said.
Councilor Nichole Rogers was the only councilor to respond to the public comments and urged the Keller administration to speak with Garcia’s family.
Read about the next steps for the Tewa Motor Lodge here.
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