A 4-year-old boy was killed, while his mother and 1-year-old brother were critically hurt after a predawn domestic violence call east of Albuquerque, according to local authorities.

TIJERAS, N.M. — In New Mexico, a 41-year-old man was charged after authorities said he shot his wife and two young children inside their home in Tijeras early Feb. 17, killing a 4-year-old boy and critically wounding the mother and a 1-year-old boy before deputies arrested him at the scene.

The case quickly drew statewide attention because the wounded woman is an assistant district attorney in Bernalillo County and because investigators said part of the attack unfolded on a 911 call. Sheriff John Allen called the recording one of the hardest emergency calls of his career. By the next day, the New Mexico Department of Justice had stepped in to handle the prosecution, saying the conflict created by the victim’s role in the local district attorney’s office required the state to take over.

Deputies were sent to the Leisure Mountain Mobile Home and RV Park in the 700 block of N.M. 333 at about 1:18 a.m. after a woman called 911 and reported that her husband was armed with a handgun. While deputies were on the way, dispatchers received updates that shots had been fired inside the residence. According to investigators, the call captured screaming, gunfire and statements they later cited in court records. Authorities said Luis Sanchez, the suspect, could be heard shouting at his wife and asking why she was not dead. Court records described the woman as saying Sanchez had shot her and the children. Deputies arrived about seven minutes after the initial call, found Sanchez outside the home and arrested him after using a Taser when he refused to surrender peacefully, investigators said.

Inside the residence, first responders found the wounded mother lying near her children, according to the arrest affidavit summarized in court and local news reports. A 4-year-old boy was pronounced dead at the scene. The 1-year-old boy and the woman were taken to a hospital in critical condition. The injured woman was later identified in court records and local reporting as Paige Mowrer, a prosecutor with the 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Authorities said the younger child had been shot multiple times and underwent surgery. Allen told reporters the scene was among the most horrific his deputies and medics had ever entered. Investigators also said a firearm was found wet in a sink, a detail that became part of the evidence collection at the home. Sanchez, naked and covered in blood when deputies arrived, refused to speak with investigators after his arrest, according to the sheriff’s office.

Court records described a chaotic and personal motive that investigators say emerged in the minutes before the shooting. Mowrer told deputies, as she was being taken into surgery, that Sanchez woke her around midnight, accused her of cheating and complained about their sex life before getting a gun and opening fire, according to the affidavit. Investigators said Sanchez could also be heard on the 911 recording making statements about the baby still being alive and saying he was a murderer. At one point, deputies said, he told officers at the door that he had killed the baby and they should kill him. Officials have not publicly said whether Sanchez was the biological father of both children or a stepfather to one or both of them. That unanswered point remained one of several gaps in the public record even as the basic outline of the attack became clearer.

The case also landed with unusual force in New Mexico’s legal community because the wounded woman worked as a prosecutor in Bernalillo County. District Attorney Sam Bregman said in a statement that the tragedy had deeply affected the office and that colleagues were struggling to absorb what had happened to a member of their staff and her children. KOB reported that the New Mexico Department of Justice formally entered the case the day after the shooting and said it would pursue full accountability. That handoff changed the normal path of prosecution. Instead of assistant district attorneys from the local office handling the charges, lawyers from the state justice department moved in because the victim herself worked for the office that otherwise would have prosecuted the case. Officials did not announce a final charging document beyond the initial counts in the first wave of public reporting, but they made clear more serious or revised charges could follow as the investigation and the victims’ medical status developed.

Sanchez was booked into the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center on multiple felony charges that included intentional child abuse resulting in death, child abuse, aggravated battery against a household member resulting in great bodily harm and tampering with evidence, according to local reporting on the arrest affidavit and jail booking. Authorities said he had no known criminal record and that deputies had not recently been called to the home for domestic violence. That detail stood out to neighbors in the East Mountains, where people told television reporters the area is usually quiet. One nearby resident, Shanna Iversen, told KOB she had seen the family the day before and nothing seemed wrong. She said the sudden flood of sirens in the early morning hours shocked residents because violence like that is rarely seen in the neighborhood. The latest early court schedule in public reports listed a detention or pretrial hearing for Feb. 25.

In the hours after the shooting, the public picture of the case came together through the sheriff’s briefing, court records and the voices of people around the family. Allen said the 911 recording was so painful because listeners could hear suffering in real time. He did not describe the full audio in public, but the quotes attributed to Sanchez in court summaries gave a grim sense of what dispatchers heard. Neighbors, meanwhile, described confusion first and then disbelief as deputies locked down the mobile home park. The district attorney’s office focused its public response on grief and support for its injured colleague. The state justice department framed the case as both a family tragedy and a serious prosecution that would now move outside the local office. Together, those responses showed a community trying to balance sympathy for the victims with the first legal steps in a homicide case likely to draw close scrutiny in the weeks ahead.

Sanchez remains in custody, while his wife and her 1-year-old son were recovering from life-threatening injuries. The prosecution has shifted to the New Mexico Department of Justice, with a key detention hearing scheduled for Feb. 25 as investigators continue to sort out the final evidence and any additional charges.