Police search for suspect in September shooting, carjacking outside North Valley plasma clinic

Oct. 25—Albuquerque police are trying to find a man who, more than a month ago, allegedly shot a person inside a plasma clinic bathroom before carjacking a woman, crashing the vehicle and forcing another driver at gunpoint to help him get away.

Albuquerque Metro Crime Stoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Richard Baca, 39, who has been on the loose since the Sept. 14 incident.

Baca was charged on Sept. 18 with several felonies, including aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, false imprisonment and leaving the scene of a crash.

A Crime Stoppers news release described Baca as 5-feet, 4-inches tall and bald.

Baca's most recent criminal charges date back to 2019, when he was serving time in prison and threw a cup of urine and feces on a corrections officer, according to court records. That case was dismissed in 2021 for unknown reasons.

Police responded around 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 14 to the shooting at CSL Plasma on Fourth NW, north of Montaño, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Officers found a man who had been shot in the hip in the bathroom and a woman and her son who had been carjacked outside.

At 5:15 p.m., officers went to a crash at Fifth and Mountain, where the carjacked car had hit another vehicle. A man at the scene told police a man and a woman had gotten out of the crashed vehicle and forced their way into his vehicle.

Police said the man, pointing the handgun at him the whole time, made him drive the pair to Tingley Park. He then drove back to the crash scene to report what happened.

Meanwhile, from his hospital bed, the man who was shot at the clinic told police the suspect followed him into the bathroom, told him not to talk to his wife, and the two men fought.

The man told police he put the suspect in the headlock and then let him go before he was shot, according to the complaint. Police identified the woman who left with the suspect as Baca's girlfriend and, matching surveillance video from the clinic and Baca's Facebook, identified Baca as the shooter.