'There's no one answering the door' : 911 calls show chaos, clarity in hours after University of New Mexico shooting

ALBUQUERQUE — From outside a University of New Mexico dorm room, LeAnna LaMotte pleaded with a 911 dispatcher for an officer’s assistance. Unbeknownst to LaMotte, her 14-year-old son was on the other side of the door, shot in the head.

“I called just a while ago about my son potentially being shot on campus. The police are still not here. It’s been over 45 minutes. I’m at the room — all the way from Rio Rancho made it here. There’s no urgency. There’s no one answering the door,” she told the dispatcher.

The dispatcher responded that the call was under the purview of campus police and that the Albuquerque Police Department could not help her.

“God, my son can be bleeding out, and there’s no urgency with this place,” LaMotte said in the call, one of several released to the Journal following the July 25 shooting.

UNM police would open the door around 4:41 a.m., confirming LaMotte’s worst fear.

The UNM police response to the shooting has come under scrutiny since Michael LaMotte, 14, of Rio Rancho, was fatally shot in the Casa del Rio dorm after being brought there by his stepbrother.

Campus police did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Prosecutors have said the alleged shooter, John Fuentes, 18, was drunk and high on LSD, cocaine and marijuana, when he pulled out a gun and shot Michael LaMotte and the young man whose dorm they were playing video games in.

How the events unfolded during the pre-dawn hours of July 25 is still unclear, but the calls provide more clarity.

They begin at 12:11 a.m. when Machai Bluhm, a dorm resident, called APD.

“I’m pretty sure I just heard what I thought was gunshots outside of my apartment,” Bluhm said. “I looked outside the window and I saw someone like a white male without a shirt on. He was booking it. He was running.”

Bluhm also told the dispatcher that he heard four or five shots. He told them he was staying in the Casa del Rio dormitory.

APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said Wednesday that they dispatched two officers around 12:15 a.m. and the officers arrived at 12:40 a.m.

Gallegos said, around 15 minutes after they arrived, one officer was released from the scene and the other responded to another call because UNM police said they were handling the situation on campus.

“UNM did not request assistance from APD as a result of the first call,” he said.

According to the call logs, around that time, an APD dispatcher called UNM police and said there were “reports of some possible shots fired in the area.”

“We had something earlier in the area. That guy had a gun. He took the clip off, dropped it on the ground, and then grabbed it and ran off,” a UNM police dispatcher replied.

A little after 1 a.m., APD got a call from a Valencia County dispatcher that Fuentes’ mother was trying to find him after he FaceTimed his father saying he was hallucinating on drugs and passed out on a roof.

Then, LaMotte’s mother called.

“So my stepson called, he has my son ... There was three of them playing a video game. They heard gunshots. My son, my stepson, and his cousin, I believe, left the building, but my son’s location is still inside that building,” she said.

The dispatcher asked her if the boys were involved in the shooting.

“As far as I know, my stepson says that they just heard it,” LeAnna LaMotte said. “But they left the room, and they didn’t see my son, my biological son.”

She was then transferred to speak to UNM police.

Around 10 minutes later, another APD dispatcher called campus police again.

“I guess her son stayed,” the dispatcher said. “He didn’t leave. And she says his location is still showing there, but she hasn’t been able to get ahold of him.”

LeAnna LaMotte called APD again and told them she had driven to campus: “I called just a while ago about my son potentially being shot on campus. The police are still not here.”

She went on to express frustration with the response time and what she perceived as a lack of urgency from authorities. The dispatcher told her that the UNM campus wasn’t under APD’s jurisdiction.

Just after 2 a.m., while searching for Fuentes, a campus police dispatcher called APD, asking if a K-9 unit could be deployed.

“We found a blood trail, and we just need help finding him,” the dispatcher told APD. The dispatcher also said that every UNM officer was searching at that time.

LaMotte’s body was found at 4:41 a.m.

Three days after the shooting, the LaMotte family wrote an open letter — hinting at a lawsuit — alleging that university police failed to respond promptly to her calls about her son being shot. The family’s legal counsel, Rothstein Donatelli, did not return a request for comment.

Earlier this month, Fuentes was ordered by a judge to remain in custody as he awaits trial.

For its part, UNM is eyeing a $2 million campus-wide alarm system upgrade, which the school’s governing board approved on Tuesday. The same day, University President Garnett Stokes said the school would ask for $5 million in state funding for increased campus security.

Going before the Board of Regents, Stokes spoke at length about the shooting, noting that the university’s urban campus is located in a city experiencing what some local leaders have characterized as a juvenile crime crisis.

“We love our university and our neighborhood community,” Stokes said. “We have work to do as individuals and work to do as a community, as educators, administrators, researchers and leaders. I think we have an obligation to lead proactively and to lead by example.”