It started as a call about a man overdosing on a dark Socorro street corner. It ended hours later with one man fighting for his life in an Albuquerque ICU and another dead on a highway miles away. This is the disturbing chain of events that shook the small New Mexico community in the cold, early hours of December 27th.
Just after 3 a.m., police rushed to the intersection of Molina Hill and Spring Street. What they found was not a medical crisis, but a scene of brutal violence. A man was bleeding heavily from multiple deep stab wounds. Officers scrambled to apply life-saving aid as the victim, conscious but severely hurt, managed to tell them a harrowing story.
He said he had been on a nearby porch, smoking meth with a man named Leroy Saavedra. Then, without warning or provocation, Saavedra attacked him with a knife. The wounded man was rushed to Socorro General Hospital and then airlifted to a trauma center in Albuquerque. He remains in critical condition, his survival uncertain.
Back at the quiet residential scene on Spring Street, the evidence told a grim story. Investigators found large pools of blood on a front porch. There was water splashed around, as if someone had tried to wash the violence away. A trail of blood led down the street, marking the victim’s desperate path to find help.
The night’s tragedy was far from over. Around 4:41 a.m., police got another call. A woman reported her vehicle stolen from the same area. She told officers that her family member, Leroy Saavedra, had come to her door asking for a ride. She refused and went inside. Soon after, her car was gone.
An urgent alert went out to law enforcement across the region to be on the lookout for the stolen vehicle. The search didn’t last long. Just before 6:10 a.m., a New Mexico State Police officer in Doña Ana County, about 75 miles south of Socorro, found the car. Next to it was the body of Leroy Saavedra.
Authorities confirmed Saavedra died in a vehicle-versus-pedestrian collision. The exact circumstances of the crash on the remote highway are still under investigation. Did he flee on foot? Was he struck by another car? Those answers are pending as state police reconstruct the scene.
The Socorro Police Department is now piecing together a devastating timeline: from a sudden stabbing on a porch, to a desperate theft for escape, to a fatal end on a dark highway. The case leaves a community grappling with a senseless spiral of violence, a victim clinging to life, and a suspect whose own story ended in instant, fatal consequence.
