New information on Sunland Park shooting incident

ABC-7 spent Tuesday working to give viewers a better understanding of an incident where a teenager was shot by a Sunland Park Police officer.

New Mexico State Police say Rafael Cervantes held a woman and a child hostage Sunday night on the 800 block of Cedar Park Avenue.

Investigators told us Cervantes used a knife to keep his two family members hostage inside a car in his driveway.

“(New Mexico State Police) are the lead agency on the investigation,” Sunland Park Police Chief Jaime Reyes told ABC-7, “so they would be the ones to ask for anything in reference to this.”

With Sunland Park Police not talking, ABC-7 went to the scene of Sunday’s officer-involved shooting and called New Mexico State police for more information.

New Mexico State Police said that Cervantes was trying to flee inside a vehicle with two hostages, a woman and a baby. He tried to back out in the vehicle, but ran into another vehicle, that’s when police say he refused their commands and they shot him once through the front windshield hitting him in the driver’s seat.

“I was in my room and I was like watching TV,” neighbor Joseph Meglio told ABC-7. “I heard this loud boom, boom like it was a shotgun or something.”

ABC-7 not only spotted the gunshot hole in the windshield, inside the car there was blood all over the driver’s seat and console and a box from a child’s Christmas toy in the back seat.

Behind the car there were signs of a struggle, remnants of a broken tail light and bumper and a vehicle, parked in the street, with a dented front bumper, the vehicle Cervantes appears to have backed into when he was trying to flee police with the hostages.

New Mexico State Police said the investigation could take a minimum of two weeks to complete.

“It’s domestic violence, so what can you say about it,” neighbor Antonio Oliveira said. “You don’t know what brought it on so.”

Cervantes remains in critical condition at University Medical Center.

ABC-7 knocked on the door of his family’s home on Tuesday, but no one answered.