Manuel Vargas, 21, male, Hispanic/Latino, was found late on the morning of Sunday, November 17, 2013, lying in a driveway near 804 San Pedro SE in Albuquerque with a gunshot wound. Officers initially responded to a report of a person passed out, then realized he had been shot; he was identified as Vargas and died from his injuries that day. The scene straddled a modest residential block off San Pedro, and early accounts differed on whether he was discovered in the street or the driveway, but
police confirmed the location and the victim’s name as the day unfolded.
Details from that afternoon were spare: detectives canvassed the area, and the police spokesperson relayed that officers had first treated the call as a welfare check before shifting to a homicide investigation when they recognized the wound. No motive was established at the scene, and authorities did not publicly describe a confrontation preceding the shooting. The address became the fixed point in reports as investigators asked for tips and pieced together the victim’s final movements in the hours before the gunfire.
In the immediate aftermath, police released no suspect description and announced no arrests. Public case compendiums that aggregate local reporting and official releases have continued to list the killing without an identified offender, indicating there have been no publicly reported arrests or charges tied to Vargas’s death. The entry tracking his case—updated in subsequent years—reflects the same silence from authorities that marked those first hours, leaving the investigation’s resolution unclear to the public.
