New Mexico boy accused of killing family then planned to kill more

[okoye35chiefs]

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — After killing his parents and three younger siblings at home, 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego reloaded an assault rifle and a .22-caliber rifle and planned to go somewhere "populated" and randomly shoot more people until he could be killed in a shootout with law enforcement, authorities said.

The teen also sent a picture of his dead mother to his girlfriend, and met her and her grandmother at the church where his father used to work, according to charging documents.

It wasn't immediately clear if that contact avoided further bloodshed. But a statement of probable cause says Griego spent time at the church, first talking to his girlfriend and her grandmother and then meeting with the church pastor and a security guard.

Church officials called authorities, and Griego initially told arriving officers he had come home Saturday morning after spending time at a friend's house to discover his family dead.

The teen later confessed to shooting his mother because he "had anger issues" and was annoyed with her, the charging document said. He said he killed his siblings after they woke up and became upset, then grabbed his parents' assault rifle and waited in the downstairs bathroom to ambush his father.

After killing his father, Griego said he reloaded the guns so "he could drive to a populated area to murder more people," according to the statement.

His plan, the statement said, was to "shoot people at random and eventually be killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement."

"There's no other way to say it, except that we have a horrific crime scene down there that we are working on," Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston said Sunday.

The detectives had finished their work at the home by Monday afternoon. The metal gate at the home's entrance was shut, a small bouquet of purple flowers was on the top of the gate, and at each side there were religious signs, including one that read "Jesus is the reason for the season."

The sheriff's office identified the victims as Greg Griego, 51, his wife, Sarah Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. All appeared to have gunshot wounds to the head.

The teen allegedly told the detective that he took a .22-caliber rifle from his parents' closet around midnight Saturday and shot his mother in the head while his younger brother slept next to her.

Griego told the detective that his brother woke up but did not believe him that their mother was dead, so he showed his mother's bloody face to his brother and then shot him, according to the statement.

The teen is accused of then shooting his two young sisters after they began crying in their room, and retrieving a military-style semi-automatic rifle from his parents' closet and waiting in a downstairs bathroom for his father to come home. The statement said he shot his father multiple times after he passed the bathroom doorway.

Greg Griego was a pastor who had once served at Calvary, one of Albuquerque's largest Christian churches. He also was well-known throughout the law enforcement community for his work as a voluntary chaplain.

Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Williamson confirmed there was no history of any emergency calls to the home in the recent past.

According to the probable cause statement, Nehemiah Griego first told a staff member at Calvary that his family was dead and that he placed the two rifles in the family van as protection before driving to the church. He later changed his story, according to the detective's statement.

Asked if he had said anything to anyone else about killing his family, Griego allegedly told the detective that he had taken a picture of his dead mother and sent it to his girlfriend

[HonestChieffan]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

I have a niece in love with those things.....ughhh.....

It's a cult society they have going on, i swear.

You should see the lines to get in the store in Downtown Chicago. Happy little girls and moms and dads with the look of doom on their faces.

[WV]

Originally Posted by Wickedson

*

So it does....sorry about that.

My reading comprehension took a break as I absorbed the clear intent to focus the article on an unnamed Military Style semi automatic rifle. By the whacky standards they are trying to pass a simple semiauto .22 auto with a bipod passes the test as an assault rifle.