Alianna Jolissa Farfan, a 23-year-old Hispanic/Latina woman, was shot and killed on January 11, 2024, inside her apartment at 4047 Montgomery Boulevard NE in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque police were dispatched to the Northeast Heights apartment shortly before 6:00 p.m. after receiving a report that someone had been shot. Officers entered the residence and found Farfan suffering from a gunshot wound in a bedroom.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, and homicide detectives began investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Investigators soon focused on Farfan's former boyfriend, Alexander Segura-Ortiz, who was also identified in early police reports as Alexander Ortiz. Friends who were inside the apartment told detectives that Farfan and Ortiz had gone into her bedroom and closed the door. A short time later, they heard a single gunshot. The friends forced their way through the bedroom door and discovered Farfan had been shot in the face. Ortiz was no longer in the room, and witnesses said he had escaped through the bedroom window. Police were also told that the person fleeing the apartment was wearing a black ski mask and black hooded sweatshirt.
As detectives interviewed Farfan's relatives and friends, they learned that she and Ortiz had been involved in what those close to her described as an abusive relationship. Investigators were told that Ortiz had been upset with Farfan on the day she was killed. A relative also told police that Farfan had recently allowed several friends to stay at her apartment because she was afraid to be alone. Detectives ultimately developed sufficient evidence to obtain a murder warrant for Ortiz.
Ortiz remained at large for several weeks. On February 21, 2024, Albuquerque police tracked him to a residence on Pennsylvania Street SE in southeast Albuquerque. Detectives barricaded him inside the residence, and after a brief standoff, Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office SWAT officers took him into custody. He was arrested on the warrant charging him with an open count of murder in Farfan's death and booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center.
The investigation surrounding Ortiz became even more serious when detectives linked him to another fatal shooting that occurred only six days after Farfan was killed. Police alleged that on January 17, 2024, Ortiz opened fire outside the Adam Food Market on East Central Avenue, killing Nicole Maldonado. Following Ortiz's arrest in Farfan's case, investigators searched the Pennsylvania Street residence and recovered components of a. 40-caliber handgun, ammunition, an extended magazine, a 50-round drum magazine and a mobile phone. Several of the firearm components were determined to be similar to those associated with the Adam Food Market shooting. Ortiz was subsequently charged in Maldonado's death as well.
Ortiz eventually went to trial in August 2025 for Farfan's killing. Prosecutors presented evidence that Farfan and Ortiz were alone behind the closed bedroom door immediately before the gunshot and that Ortiz escaped through the ground-floor window as other people in the apartment forced their way into the room. Prosecutors also noted that no firearm was found inside the bedroom. Ortiz's defense attorney disputed the prosecution's theory, arguing that another person in the apartment could have fired the fatal shot and contending that investigators focused on Ortiz while failing to adequately pursue other possibilities.
The jury rejected the defense argument. On August 21, 2025, Ortiz was found guilty of first-degree murder in Farfan's death. The verdict established criminal responsibility for the shooting more than a year and a half after she was killed. On September 29, 2025, Ortiz was sentenced to life in the custody of the New Mexico Corrections Department.
Ortiz's separate prosecution for Nicole Maldonado's death also resulted in a conviction. He later entered a no-contest plea in that case and, in April 2026, was sentenced to an additional 18 years in prison. By then, he was already serving the life sentence imposed for Farfan's murder. Farfan's homicide investigation is now listed by the Albuquerque Police Department as closed.
