Video: Justin Hansen prison attack stemmed from his 'high profile case'

It was November 26, and Justin Hansen had only been at the Las Cruces prison for a week when an inmate attacked him.

In the video, you can see an inmate take a swing at Hansen’s head.

The two move to the ground and an older inmate tries to pull off the attacker, but then stops. An inmate tells him to back off or he would be next, and Hansen doesn’t stand a chance.

Justin Hansen is serving an 18-year prison sentence for the brutal shovel beating of then 17-year-old Brittani Marcell. Hansen beat the Cibola High School student nearly to death, inside her westside home in 2008.

After Hansen was attacked, he was left with bad injuries to his face, and State Police came to interview him.

“When I first looked in the mirror I thought, ‘Oh man. I didn’t even want to look in the mirror,” said Hansen in the interview.

He told the officers he’d just been moved from the Los Lunas prison to Las Cruces a week prior. He said he hadn’t seen the light of day until the moment before the attack.

“I went to shake an older gentleman’s hand that lent me a book while I was in the room to kind of pass the time, so I wanted to thank him for the book, then got hit from behind,” he told the officers.

Marcos Gonzalez Cordova, who attacked Hansen, is serving time for armed robbery and aggravated fleeing an officer.

In the video, you can see he’s already outside when Hansen enters the gated area. Cordova walks past Hansen and briefly goes inside, appearing to check if any guards are nearby.

“You don’t have any idea why they hit you?” one of the officers asked Hansen.

He replied, “I don’t even know who hit me.”

But the officers weren’t happy with that answer, and continued to push Hansen.

“All I know is from hearsay,” he told them.

So, the officers continued to find a motive.

“What’d you hear?” asked an officer to Hansen. He replied, “That it was Burque boys that did it, was kind of they think it was orchestrated.”

In the State Police report, they wrote through other inmate interviews that the attack stemmed from Hansen’s “high profile case.”