New Mexico teen gets 22 years for kidnapping and killing 16-year-old

Jesus Quintana Cota was 16 when he was lured out on a date, kidnapped, shot, and left on Pajarito Mesa outside Albuquerque. His body was found on May 19, 2024, by a passerby, after Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies began investigating the remote desert scene.

Daniel Medrano Garcia, now 19, was sentenced to 22 years in prison on May 5, 2026, by Judge Joseph Montano for his role in the killing. Medrano Garcia had pleaded no contest to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, armed robbery with a firearm enhancement, and aggravated assault.

Prosecutors said Mariana Gomez set the trap, luring Quintana Cota out before Gomez, Medrano Garcia, and Dominik Marques kidnapped him and took him to Pajarito Mesa. Police also alleged the three teens planned the kidnapping and murder on social media, turning the case into a tightly coordinated group crime rather than a random attack.

Medrano Garcia’s 22-year sentence matches the term given to Marques, while Gomez received 18 years. That sentencing structure matters: the court did not treat the killing as the work of one actor, but as a shared plan with different levels of responsibility.

The case has already taken a complicated path through the courts. An Albuquerque Journal report said Mariana Gomez-Salinas was later convicted of kidnapping but acquitted of murder in a 2025 trial, a split verdict that shows how sharply the defendants’ roles were separated as the case moved forward. Medrano Garcia’s plea and sentence close one major chapter, but they do not erase the larger questions that have followed the case from the start, including how the group coordinated the kidnapping, who made the final decisions on Pajarito Mesa, and how the murder charge will land against the remaining participants.

For Bernalillo County, the details still sting: a 16-year-old boy, a remote dumping ground outside Albuquerque, and a body that stayed exposed until someone stumbled across it. The sentence puts Medrano Garcia behind bars, but the case remains a grim example of how quickly a planned teen abduction can end in murder.