A drive-by shooting that sent bullets into an occupied home and a parked vehicle in Santa Fe's Las Acequias neighborhood last week has ended with criminal charges against two young men and the detention of a 15-year-old boy who police say was driving the truck the shots were fired from. No one was hurt in the attack, which struck a house on the 1200 block of Senda de Valle.
Santa Fe police have identified the suspected shooters as 20-year-old Samuel Vicente Perea of Pecos and 19-year-old Diego Elijah Bencomo of Santa Fe, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican. Criminal complaints filed this month charge both men with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at an occupied building, tampering with evidence, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Police said the two were not in custody as of last Thursday, though a judge has since issued arrest warrants for them, according to Noticias El Paso.
Surveillance Footage Led Investigators to a Pickup Truck
According to documents cited by the New Mexican, a 15-year-old boy from Pecos was driving a pickup truck while Perea and Bencomo fired shots at the home. Investigators say they connected the boy to the shooting by tracking the pickup on neighborhood surveillance cameras, and police found at least 11 bullet casings at the scene. The boy, identified elsewhere as Jimmy Flores, was arrested and booked into the San Juan County Juvenile Detention Center, per the same account.
Police affidavits say the teen named Perea and Bencomo as participants in the shooting. The boy is suspected of taking part himself. He told police he had received threats from the ex-boyfriend of a girl he was dating and believed he was the actual target of the attack. Officers noted that the boy provided the ex-boyfriend's name, but also noted that the ex-boyfriend appeared to live in a different home from the one struck by gunfire, the station's report notes.
A Pattern of Youth Violence in Santa Fe
The case lands amid broader scrutiny of youth violence in the Santa Fe area. The First Judicial District, which covers Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties, recorded 680 offenses against youth in 2024, with 29% of those charges considered violent, according to the New Mexican's earlier reporting. That same reporting found that while many youth criminal charges have declined substantially over the years, weapons violations have climbed since an initial pandemic-era drop — and that Santa Fe police have found at least nine Santa Fe Public Schools students with weapons on campus over a recent two-year span, four of them firearms.
Santa Fe's overall crime numbers for the first half of 2026 tell a mixed story. The city saw a 27% decline in burglary reports and 14% fewer assaults compared with the same period a year earlier, according to Newsradio KKOB. But homicides ticked up slightly, with four recorded in that window compared to three the year before, the station reported.
Santa Fe has seen earlier cases involving teenagers and guns. In a prior report, the New Mexican noted that at least 14 Santa Fe-area teens had been arrested in a single year on charges ranging from shooting at a vehicle to first-degree murder, and that in July 2020, 17-year-old Ivan Perez was fatally shot at a south-side apartment complex. A separate 2022 report from the outlet described two 17-year-old boys facing charges over a shooting in Las Acequias Park, though it is not established whether that earlier case is connected to the current one.
No court dates, attorney information or custody updates beyond Thursday's status were available for Perea or Bencomo. The First Judicial District's own magistrate court docket, which lists hearings for the current day and the following six days, cautions that hearing details may contain omissions and that the court makes no warranty as to their accuracy.
