New Mexico man found guilty in 2019 murder of UNM baseball player, Nolan graduate
A jury in Albuquerque found a 25-year-old man guilty on Tuesday in the May 2019 shooting death of a University of New Mexico baseball player and graduate of Nolan Catholic High School.
Jurors convicted Darian Bashir of murder in the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Jackson Weller, according to KRQE-TV in Albuquerque.
Bashir faces a maximum of life in prison. Sentencing will be scheduled at another date, according to news reports.
Weller played baseball at Nolan in Fort Worth, graduating in 2014.
After graduation, Weller played baseball at a junior college in Arizona and transferred to New Mexico in 2018.
Prosecutors in the trial had said that Bashir shot Weller as an act of revenge after Weller got into a fight with Bashir’s friends at an Albuquerque club.
But Bashir took the witness stand Monday and said he shot Weller “cause in this moment I felt threatened. I was pissed off. I was angry,” according to KRQE-TV.
Bashir also claimed Weller approached him first and looked “hostile.”
Bashir was charged with first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the May 2019 shooting death of Weller outside of a nightclub.
Surveillance video showed a man, later identified as Bashir, walk up to Weller, pull a gun from his waist and shoot him once, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Friends of Weller who were with him told detectives Weller had been in a fistfight with several people before the shooting, but Bashir was not one of them, according to the arrest warrant obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
After the minor scuffle, Weller was standing with his hands open and by his sides when he was shot by Bashir, according to the arrest warrant.
A mistrial was declared in August when there was a lack of jurors, and the trial resumed this month.
Bashir was previously arrested and charged for his role in a shooting on Feb. 12, 2019. In that incident, shots were fired from a vehicle and narrowly missed APD officers who were nearby, according to a press release from Albuquerque police.
During the arrest in February 2019, a minor in the car said the group was involved in a “gang beef.” Police found three guns in the car, one of which was stolen, along with numerous firearm magazines, casings, a pound of marijuana, ¼ ounce of heroin and a digital scale.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 6:41 PM.
