Carrillo gets 26½ years in deaths of Diné men

ALBUQUERQUE

Nathaniel Carrillo, 18, was sentenced Tuesday to 26½ years in prison for the part he played in the brutal beating deaths of Navajo tribal members Allison Gorman and Kee Thompson.

Carrillo is the second-oldest of three youth convicted of beating Gorman and Thompson with boards, sticks, and heavy stones while they slept in an empty lot on the west side of town.

Alex Rios, then 18, was sentenced to 67 ½ years in February by Second Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora, the same judge who sentenced Carrillo.

Gilbert Tafoya, the youngest youth charged in the murders, then 15, pled guilty in her courtroom last year in exchange for an amenability hearing. The amenability hearing will determine if he will be tried as an adult or a juvenile. It’s yet to happen.

As part of his plea deal, Tafoya agreed to testify against Rios and Carrillo.

During Rios’s trial last December, Tafoya stated that the three youth came across Gorman and Thompson on their way back from a party in the early morning hours of July 19, 2014, and decided to rob and beat them.

Then, according to court testimony, they went back to Tafoya’s nearby home, found a knife, returned to the empty lot and stabbed them.

Later that morning, Albuquerque police followed footprints from the crime scene to Tafoya’s near-by home where they discovered bloody clothes and Gorman’s identification and EBT card.

“Those men were absolutely defenseless. They never had a chance to defend themselves,” state prosecutor Vincent Martinez told Zamora before she announced Carrillo’s sentence.

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