Native family seeking answers about the death of Rudy Gorman

By Corey Howard

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KJRH) — Regina Gorman grew up in the Navajo Nation with three of her siblings. Her best friend would be Rudy Gorman, her older brother.

“He took care of me,” Regina Gorman said. “I hung out with him a lot too.”

For Regina Gorman, life was good as a kid. She remembers turning 16 and watching her brother leave home to start his own family, but things were not always smooth for Rudy Gorman.

After leaving home, Rudy Gorman made a few bad decisions, which led to his incarceration.

After his release, Regina Gorman says, Rudy Gorman would struggle to find stability. Out of a job and with no one willing to hire him because of his criminal history, Rudy Gorman would bounce around from house to house, looking for a place to stay.

For Rudy Gorman’s immediate family, there is a series of unknowns about what happened in his life during this time, especially on Nov. 13, 2008, when they received a call they did not expect from Rudy Gorman’s girlfriend.

“She told me, ‘Maybe you should sit down because something is wrong.’ And I was like, ‘What happened?’ And she told me, ‘Your brother got murdered last night.’ And that was it. I just lost it,” Regina said.

Rudy Gorman was shot and killed in Albuquerque. The message of Rudy Gorman’s death hit his family hard.

“I miss him,” Rachel Gorman, Rudy Gorman’s oldest sister, said. “It’s been so long, but it just seems like yesterday.”

To this day, Rudy Gorman’s family is still looking for answers.

“The detectives never reached out to us,” Regina Gorman said. “Nobody reached out to us except the girlfriend … none of the police reached out to us.”

KOAT Action 7 News did some digging, and according to a police report, Albuquerque police arrested Robert Romero in connection with Rudy Gorman’s death.

The criminal report says a witness told police what happened the night of Rudy Gorman’s death. The witness said Rudy Gorman and another man named Alfredo Martinez went to an apartment complex to retrieve a stolen gun.

Rudy Gorman and Martinez knocked on the door. When Gregory Meraz opened the door, he and Rudy Gorman wrestled for control of the shotgun Rudy Gorman was holding. The witness says Romero began to fire a 9mm handgun, striking and killing both Rudy Gorman and Martinez. A third person was also struck in the gunfire and taken to the hospital after knocking on the neighbor’s window.

The Albuquerque Police Department arrested Romero, but he was not prosecuted due to insufficient evidence.

These are details in the case Rudy Gorman’s family says they never received.

“It’s been a long, hard road for everybody,” Rachel Gorman said.

“That’s what I was wondering,” Regina Gorman said. “Why did it happen to him.”

Six years after Rudy Gorman’s death, the family received some positive news. Before Rudy Gorman died, he had a son who looked just like him.

“It reminds me a lot about him,” Regina Gorman said. “Even [his] laugh and stuff.”

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