A construction worker was convicted Friday of killing seven people, including two police officers, in what started as a domestic dispute last January.
The jury deliberated Ricky Abeyta's fate for 11 days and will reconvene Monday to consider whether he should be executed by injection for the first-degree murder conviction for killing a state police officer in the line of duty.The jury also convicted Abeyta of second-degree murder in the killing of an Arriba County deputy, of three more counts of first-degree murder, one more count of second-degree murder and one of involuntary manslaughter. Abeyta was acquitted of trying to kill a teenage boy during the shooting spree.
The slayings occurred Jan. 26 in and around Abeyta's house in a rural cluster of mobile homes a few miles from Chimayo, 100 miles north of Albuquerque. Abeyta, 29, surrendered to police in Albuquerque the next day.