Andrew Jowell Madrid, a 16-year-old Hispanic male known to friends and family as "AJ," was a beloved sophomore and junior varsity baseball player at Centennial High School in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Described as a beacon of joy with a kind spirit and playful humor, AJ had played baseball since he was four years old, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Adrian. He was a cherished son to his parents, Ignacio and Marcy Madrid, who were his biggest fans.
AJ dreamed of playing baseball at the collegiate level and had ambitions of becoming an engineer, a YouTuber, or a pyrotechnician.
On the night of March 21, 2025, AJ was at an unsanctioned car show at Young Park in Las Cruces when a fight broke out between two groups. The altercation escalated, and at least four people began firing guns into the crowd. In the chaos that followed, AJ was shot and killed. Two other young men, 19-year-old Dominick Estrada and 17-year-old Jason Gomez, also lost their lives. The shooting left fourteen other people, ranging in age from 16 to 36, with injuries.
Las Cruces Police investigators arrived to find a large, chaotic crime scene, with the park's parking lot littered with shell casings. The investigation quickly led to the arrest of four suspects. According to court documents, one of the suspects, Tomas Rivas, and another teen tried to hide four semi-automatic pistols in a nearby dumpster, but police were able to recover the weapons. The district attorney announced his intention to charge all four defendants as adults with murder.
In February 2026, Tomas Rivas, then 21, was tried before a Doña Ana County jury. After a weeklong trial, jurors found him guilty of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Andrew Madrid, Dominick Estrada, and Jason Gomez. The conviction was based on a "depraved mind murder" theory, which requires a finding that the defendant committed an act greatly dangerous to others while showing a total indifference to the value of human life.
In the days after the shooting, the Las Cruces community gathered for vigils to support the victims' families. AJ's funeral mass was held at The Immaculate Heart of Mary Cathedral, where his teammates remembered him as a player who "played with his hair on fire" and led by example. As of the verdict in February 2026, a sentencing hearing for Tomas Rivas had not yet been scheduled.
