ABQ RAW staff
06/12/2022
NW Albuquerque –
Around 8:30PM on June 11th, 2022, shots were reported coming near the fields at the Jennifer Riordan Spark Kindness Albuquerque Regional Sports Complex where a USSSA State baseball tournament for youth was being held.
Witnesses said they saw bullets hit the field. The shots were coming from a hill near the complex. Fans, players, umpires, and staff evacuated the area when it was apparent the rounds were striking the field.
One witness said: ” The opposing team was screaming for us to get down and everyone fell to the floor. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. I was running around trying to find my daughter who was playing catch with her friends at the time. We immediately evacuated our field and began warning other fields that someone was shooting and all baseball fields eventually cleared and everyone was hiding.” Albuquerque Police was dispatched to the area. Police scanned the area with binoculars from the two story building to search for suspects and vehicles. A few cars leaving the mesa in the area were stopped by the police.
It is unclear if any suspect(s) were found and if evidence was collected from the mesa hill where the shots were fired.
One witness had frustration with the police response saying the response was laxed. ABQ RAW does not have information on when the call was dispatched to officers. “APD finally showed up. WALKING into the sports complex. I am usually an advocate for our police force, but tonight I am extremely disappointed in the the amount of time it took for them to show up, and their sense of urgency to get inside of the field and finally getting up into the mesa where the shooters actually were!”
The state baseball tournament suspended its games for the evening and restarted them this Sunday. The complex has five fully lit fields and was a City of Albuquerque funded project to attract softball and baseball tournaments.