{"id":33289,"date":"2023-06-20T19:31:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T01:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/suspect-named-in-farmington-mall-shooting\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:08:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:08:07","slug":"suspect-named-in-farmington-mall-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/suspect-named-in-farmington-mall-shooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspect named in Farmington mall shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A Mobile Command Unit arrived on-site about 12:30 p.m. The investigation remains active. (David Edward Albright\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

An unsolved homicide became the subject of a sentencing hearing Tuesday in District Judge Daylene Marsh\u2019s courtroom.<\/p>\n

Defense Attorney Tyson Quail named the man he believes to be responsible in the March 23 shooting death of Ariana Rosas, 18, in the parking lot of Animas Valley Mall.<\/p>\n

Quail said the \u201calleged victim,\u201d who survived the shooting, Vincent Amato, is a known drug dealer, and is the person who caused Rosas\u2019 death.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmato is responsible for an incident behind the mall, where a woman got shot and died,\u201d Quail said. \u201cVincent Amato is hiding out in Denver because the person who shot him wants to finish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quail said Amato appears to the be the alleged victim, \u201cwhere things always go wrong when he is making a drug deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to early reports from Farmington Police Department, Rosas and an unidentified male were in a parked vehicle on the mall\u2019s south side, when they were shot. Rosas was pronounced dead at the scene and the male was shot in the arm.<\/p>\n

Police have repeatedly said they have no suspect, and Quail is claiming Amato was the man shot in the arm.<\/p>\n

The reason Quail brought this up in open court was to protect his client Ian Perez, who was facing jail time for an unrelated incident. Perez previously pleaded no contest to attempted armed robbery, possession of a controlled substance and aggravated fleeing of a law enforcement officer. Both are in connection to an incident in October 2022.<\/p>\n

Quail told the court Vincent Amato was also involved in this incident. He reportedly told Farmington police that a girl from Cortez reached out to them to meet up, but the statement was \u201cfalse,\u201d Quail said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmato is a drug trafficker Perez showed up to buy cocaine from,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Quail was seeking probation for Perez, who had a 2022 conviction for misdemeanor theft out of Cortez.<\/p>\n

Perez was in the San Juan County Detention Center for 245 days and told the court he learned a lot while being in custody. \u201cI\u2019ve seen everything I don\u2019t want to be while in here,\u201d he said, adding he has a 8-month-old child and wants to be a part of its life.<\/p>\n

Judge Marsh sentenced Perez to six years in the Department of Corrections and then, suspended the sentenced placing Perez on six years supervised probation. If Perez violates his probation he could face time in prison.<\/p>\n

When asked for and update on the mall shooting from Farmington Police, the department\u2019s Public Information Officer Shanice Gonzales said, \u201cThe incident is still under investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was updated to correct the spelling of Amado to Amato. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defense attorney claims March 23 fatal shooting was drug deal gone bad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,133,168,799,2833,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-farmington","tag-farmington-police-department","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82137,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33289\/revisions\/82137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33289"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}