New Mexico

ESPAÑOLA, N.M. (KRQE) - A northern New Mexico man is charged with taking a 19-year-old woman as a trade for drugs, then forcing her to have sex.

Herman Flores Jr., 24, is charged with kidnapping, aggravated burglary and criminal sexual penetration.

Española police say the 19-year-old woman's brother traded her to Flores for heroin.

According to a police report, Flores allegedly held her for about a month, from October to November, and saw her as his property.

Two traveling salesmen robbed an elderly Albuquerque couple before beating and suffocating the wife and stomping on the husband's head, according to criminal complaints.

Michael Lee, 21, who was born in Boston, and Travis Rowley, 23, a native of Glendora, Calif., have been charged with two open counts of murder and tampering with evidence in the killings.

Korean immigrants Tak Yi, 79, and his 69-year-old wife, Pung Yi, were killed in their home Tuesday.

Lee and Rowley worked for IntegrityPGM, a Las Vegas, Nev.-based company that contracts young people to sell magazine and book subscriptions nationwide.

According to the criminal complaints, Rowley and Lee were dropped off in the Yis' neighborhood to sell the subscriptions when they saw Tak Yi working in his backyard. Rowley told police that Lee said he was going to "steal an item from the home."

Lee allegedly punched an elderly woman who fell to the floor, and Rowley reportedly dragged her into the home. Then Tak Yi entered the home and tried to call police, Rowley told police.

After punching the man twice, Rowley said Lee suffocated the woman and then walked over to the man and stomped his foot on his head, the complaint said. Rowley said he believed the "blow was fatal."

A Brooklyn man was arrested Wednesday morning after beating his mother and tossing the family dog out the window of a fifth-floor apartment, authorities said.

The dog, a 55-pound pit bull mix named Gemini, was killed.

Police said the suspect, Alan DeCosta, 31, attacked his 48-year-old mother with a vacuum cleaner before hurling the dog. Charges against him were pending.

Albuquerque police have made an arrest in the Halloween strangulation and rape of an 11-year-old West Side girl.

Chief Ray Schultz said detectives took Robert J. Gonzales, 20, into custody shortly before 3 p.m. on the grounds of West Mesa High School.

Police said they do not know why Gonzales was at the school. Gonzales is not a student, and Albuquerque Public School officials said they were unaware the arrest had been made at West Mesa.

Schultz said a confidential informant told police about a relationship between the victim, Victoria Sandoval, and Gonzales, leading police to seek him for questioning Thursday afternoon.

Grandparents found their 11-year-old granddaughter dead in her bed the morning after Halloween. Now, Albuquerque police say she was raped and murdered.

The Albuquerque Police Department is looking for the man who killed her, and they said it was not a random act. They think the child knew her killer.

Police said the girl went trick-or-treating and then went to bed at her home on 98th Street in Southwest Albuquerque.

APD said sometime during the night, a man crawled through a window, and raped and murdered her.

"The 43-year-old homeless man told cops he had never laid eyes on Russo Carriero, 56, before he stabbed her in the chest twice last Wednesday on the seventh level of the Galleria mall garage.

"All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes, and she had to die . . . I didn't care, as long as she was white," he said.

"I wanted to kill someone who represented the white lifestyle."

Grant said he became a racist after his July 2003 release from Sing Sing, where he spent 24 years for three Bronx rapes and for attacking another inmate with a pitchfork.

People in White Plains called him "rape boy" and "n- - - - -," he said.

As a result, he said, he was fighting a race war â?? and his only regret was that he didn't know anything about biological weapons.

Grant said he was prepared to die for killing Russo Carriero, a legal secretary who worked at a law firm across the street.

"It's not about the woman. It's not about rape. It's not about nothing of that," he said.

"There's a lot of white people that really need to die. I don't give a f - - - what public opinion is about that. They can go f - - - themselves. These people are sick, and they are getting away with it.

"I can't be around white people. I'm scared of white people," he added. "They forced me into a position where I'm racist.

"It was not a criminal motive. I'm really, really fighting a war on being attacked," he said.

Asked if he would kill again, Grant answered yes.

"My only regret is that I didn't have the means to do more," he said.