Ashley N. Maestas Casias, a 33-year-old Hispanic woman, was found fatally shot on the evening of February 24, 2025, inside a mobile home at Valencia Trailer Park off State Road 522 in the El Prado area of Taos County. Deputies with the Taos County Sheriff’s Office had been sent to the residence for a welfare check. When they entered, they discovered Casias and Anastasia “Stacey” Romo dead from multiple gunshot wounds, turning what began as a request to check on the occupants into a
double-homicide investigation.
Casias was from the Taos-area community of Talpa and was remembered by her family as someone who loved being with her children, relatives and friends. She enjoyed camping and shopping, and her sudden death left her loved ones preparing for a funeral while investigators worked to determine why the two women had been killed. Although some initial news reports listed Casias as 34 and reported Romo as 39, Casias’s family obituary identified her as 33.
Evidence collected at the mobile home quickly led investigators beyond Taos County. Authorities in Rio Arriba County contacted the Taos County Sheriff’s Office after locating a person in Española who was believed to possess a vehicle belonging to one of the slain women. That person was identified as Cesar Garcia of Taos. His possession of the vehicle and the evidence recovered after the shootings made him a person of interest with a potentially significant connection to the deaths, but the publicly available reports did not state that he had been formally charged with killing Casias or Romo.
Garcia was already being taken into custody in connection with another violent death that occurred earlier on February 24. Rio Arriba County authorities accused him of fatally stabbing a man during an altercation near the Ohkay Owingeh Travel Center outside Española. Investigators reportedly used surveillance recordings to identify him in that case. He was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the stabbing, along with a vehicle-related offense, and was booked into the Rio Arriba County Detention Center. Those charges concerned the separate Rio Arriba County killing rather than the deaths of Casias and Romo.
The timing of the three deaths, Garcia’s alleged involvement in the fatal stabbing and his reported possession of a vehicle connected to one of the women placed him at the center of investigators’ attention. Early statements from authorities indicated that there was a strong possibility he would be treated as a suspect in the El Prado case. Nevertheless, the distinction remained important: he had been arrested and charged in the travel-center homicide, while his precise legal status in the double shooting was described publicly as a person of interest or an individual potentially tied to the killings.
No reliable public report located through July 2026 announced separate homicide charges, a trial or a conviction for Casias’s death. The available information therefore indicates that Garcia was identified and detained in connection with another murder while investigators examined his possible role in the El Prado shootings, but it does not establish that he was prosecuted or convicted for killing Casias or Romo. The double homicide remained defined by the discovery of the two women during the welfare check, the evidence linking the investigation to Española and the unresolved question of whether Garcia’s possession of the victim’s vehicle could be developed into proof of responsibility for the shootings.
