ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – For the last month, Isidro Gallegos has been busy, wreaking havoc all across Albuquerque. “His arrest that day significantly reduced the amount of armed robberies in two separate area commands, just one arrest,” Commander Kyle Hartsock with the Albuquerque Police Department said.
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Gallegos was arrested on March 15 on several armed robbery charges. Since then, police have tied him to at least 15 more. “Once he was arrested, based on his description, clothing, and the car he was in, our detectives came in, interviewed him, and went back and pieced together those 15 other robberies that had already been reported to police,” Hartsock said.
From February 5 to March 15, he is accused of robbing gas stations, motels, businesses, and even carjacking a victim, all at gunpoint. Police say most of these crimes were done in stolen vehicles. “He’s stealing cars, he’s stealing cars he knows are easy to steal, he committing patterned robberies, and he’s doing it over and over and over again, and the only thing that’s going to stop him was us.”
The criminal complaint says Gallegos used different guns, and a knife, and on several occasions, he is accused of firing his weapon during the robberies. “He is the poster child of poster children. He is a convicted felon, shouldn’t have a gun at all, but did, so we’re already working with our federal partners, they might adopt charges against Isidro for these crimes.”
And these charges are just the beginning. “By the way, we think he’s involved with more, that’s just what we can prove right now,” Hartsock said.
But police say during several of these crimes he had help from a woman who admitted to killing her boyfriend more than a decade ago. Brooke Hefty pled no contest to involuntary manslaughter. But now, she’s back behind bars, arrested alongside Gallegos for her part in several armed robberies on March 15.
Gallegos has a criminal record dating back to 2000. For the most recent armed robberies, he’s facing a massive number of 72 charges, and a dozen more in another case. “Isidro is an overachiever, that’s a lot of charges, but he earned every single one of them,” Hartsock said.
Gallegos is scheduled back in court later this week to see if he will be held in jail until trial.
