Tyler Lewis Lackey, a 24-year-old male, had returned home to Albuquerque after service as a U.S. Army combat medic in the 82nd Airborne. On the night of February 5, 2016, he stopped at a Wells Fargo ATM near Yale and Gibson after dinner with a friend. Around 10 p.m., a masked man approached him; Lackey, who had a concealed-carry permit, drew his pistol and followed the man back toward a red-and-white car. Gunfire erupted.
Lackey was struck in the chest and abdomen; he died in the early hours of February 6, 2016. Mourners later recalled him as a disciplined paratrooper and medic who had deployed to Afghanistan, a son and brother “taken from us” far too soon.
Detectives quickly focused on a pair seen near the ATM. Within days, Albuquerque police named Matthew Chavez and Veronica Trimble as suspects. Witness accounts and surveillance images described the attacker as masked—at one point seen in a Falcons jersey—and investigators linked a stolen car that was set ablaze miles away to the getaway. The search crossed state lines; by March 8, 2016, officers arrested Chavez and Trimble in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and began building a case that included allegations Chavez fled, disposed of phones and a gun, and burned the vehicle after the shooting.
Prosecutors ultimately dropped the robbery and tampering charges against Trimble that October for lack of evidence, but pressed on against Chavez. In 2018, a Bernalillo County jury convicted him of second-degree murder and attempted armed robbery, and a judge imposed a 23½-year sentence. Three years later, the New Mexico Court of Appeals overturned those convictions, ruling the jury should have been allowed to consider a lesser voluntary-manslaughter instruction given the self-defense claims tied to the moment Lackey drew his gun. The state's petition for further review was denied, clearing the way for a retrial.
The case returned to court in spring 2024. After testimony that included revisions to earlier accounts of who fired first, jurors acquitted Chavez of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter on May 6, 2024, but found him guilty of evidence tampering. With credit for time served, he was released that day. The killing of Lackey—shot during a botched ATM robbery he tried to stop—also spurred a push for the “Tyler Lackey Memorial Bill,” an effort by state officials to prevent defendants who initiate violent felonies from receiving step-down manslaughter instructions in future cases.
