Police: Subway employee shoots and kills alleged robber

By Sasha Lenninger and Vince Rodriguez

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — A suspected robber is dead after attempting to rob a business in southeast Albuquerque Tuesday morning, according to the Albuquerque Police Department.

Around 5:20 a.m., officers were called to a shooting at a Subway at 1306 Gibson Blvd. southeast.

“After preliminary investigation, talking to some of the employees at the business, it appears that the male had entered the business and attempted to rob one of the employees,” said APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos. “There was an employee who was armed, that came out of the backroom, I think, to help the other employee who was being robbed.”

According to Gallegos, the Subway employee shot the robber, killing him.

“As far as we know, the robber was armed,” Gallegos said. “Detectives are very interested in who this attempted robber is and what motived the robbery this early in the morning at this location.”

Detectives are working to identify the alleged robber and will talk to Subway employees to figure out what happened.

“It is concerning that we haven’t had, in at least a few years, an armed robbery at a restaurant or a business that turned into a homicide. And now we’ve had two in the last couple of weeks,” Gallegos said.

That deadly armed robbery happened earlier this month at Tobacco Town in northwest Albuquerque.

The department is now working to crack down on suspected robbers and homicide offenders. It’s called Operation Turn the Tide.

“In the last two weeks, we’ve served dozens and dozens of warrants, search warrants, all types of warrants across the board. We’ve moved a lot of detectives to help with robbery and homicide because we are looking for offenders who are tied to these homicides or potentially tied to some of these serial armed robberies,” Gallegos said.

The goal is to aggressively go after the suspects and get them off the streets.

“We’ve been able to execute a lot of the search warrants. What happens when we do a lot of these long-term investigations with homicides and serial robbers, it takes some time to execute warrants on phones, social media, residences, on those sorts of things,” Gallegos said. “By putting all these resources to help them, we are developing these warrants, developing new leads and really going after these suspects.”

According to Gallegos, the operation has been successful so far.

“It led to one homicide suspect, maybe two so far,” Gallegos said. “One individual who seems to be tied to multiple homicides and a mass shooting recently.”

He added, it’s turning into a lot of productive information for the department as well.

“There are also a good handful of serial robbers that we have identified that are hitting a lot of different places,” Gallegos said.

It is unclear if the alleged robber at Subway is tied to other crimes, but it is a possibility APD is looking into. Investigators have not identified him.

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