Gabriel Villanueba, a White/Caucasian male, 32, was found shot to death just before dawn on August 21, 2023, inside the Wind River Place apartment complex in the 900 block of North 19th Street on Colorado Springs’ west side. Officers were called around 2:48 a.m. and discovered him deceased at the scene; the El Paso County Coroner identified him the next day following an autopsy as a resident of Colorado Springs.
Detectives immediately treated the case as a homicide while the coroner worked to determine the precise cause and manner of death.
After three weeks of investigation, arrest warrants were issued on September 11, 2023, and a coordinated operation by the Violent Offender Fugitive Task Force and specialized CSPD units took four suspects into custody that same day. Police announced that two adults—18-year-olds Santiago Dominguez and Ali Talib, both from Colorado Springs—and two juveniles, ages 13 and 15, were arrested in connection with Villanueba’s killing. All four were booked on suspicion of second-degree murder, with the adults also facing additional counts including robbery and motor vehicle theft. The juveniles’ names were withheld due to their ages.
Details outlined later in court filings indicated the group had targeted Villanueba to steal his firearm, with the teens returning to the complex within hours of an earlier altercation before the fatal shooting. Those allegations added a layer of premeditation and clarified why investigators also pursued robbery-related charges alongside the homicide counts.
The prosecutions unfolded over the following two years. By September 2025, one of the adult defendants, Santiago Dominguez, had been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison, while proceedings and negotiations involving the remaining defendants continued through the local courts. The case, initially counted as Colorado Springs’ 20th homicide of 2023, thus progressed from a predawn shooting to arrests, affidavits revealing a motive centered on a stolen gun, and a significant prison term for one of the accused.
