Suspect held in Rio Rancho gunshot death

RIO RANCHO, N.M. (KRQE) - Rio Rancho police are investigating a Halloween night killing, the city's first homicide in more than a year.

At midday Thursday police were executing a search warrant at a home on the 1600 block of Greenview Way in western Rio Rancho near Unser Boulevard and Cherry Road.

Police were called to the home shortly midnight Wednesday by someone in the home who said a man had been shot to death.

When officers got there they found the dead man, who so far is identified by police only as being around age 51. Within 15 minutes they had taken a suspect into custody a few blocks away.

Police identified him as Leonard Tidwell, 20.

Officers say that the victim and Tidwell knew each other and added Tidwell lived in the home with his girlfriend and her mother. The victim is reported to be the mother's boyfriend.

Tidwell and the victim had an ongoing dispute although police have not said what it was about.

Some neighbors suspect the financial stress of Tidwell being a new father may have played a role in the killing. They told KRQE News 13 Tidwell, who has a 3-month-old child, had been struggling to make ends meet and there was tension between him and the victim over money.

Still, they were shocked to hear the situation may have ended in murder.

"I would never expect this from Leonard," Ronnie Chavez said. "He was a down-to-earth guy, he was a straight-up person, an honest person. He was someone that you could rely on and talk to.

"If you needed help on your vehicle, he helped me fix my car several times. It was nothing any of us would think he would do."

Tidwell is being held on an open count of murder and also is being charged with child abuse because his child, said to be about 1 or 2, was in the home at the time.

Investigators said Tidwell has been cooperating with police and making statements about the shooting. Depending on those statements and the results of the investigation, the charges could change, police said.

The last murder Rio Rancho police investigated was in July 2011. Rio Rancho doesn't even average one murder a year.