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Leilani Tripp

Age : 53

Gender : Female

Race : Asian

Date : 08/19/2025

Location : Los Altos Lofts, 10330 Hotel Avenue NE

City : Albuquerque

County : Bernalillo

State : New Mexico

Agency : Albuquerque Police Department

Officer(s) :Christopher Vaughn

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during mental health crisis at apartment complex

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 08/19/2025, Albuquerque Police Officer Christopher Vaughn shot and killed 53-year-old Lelani “Leilani” Tripp during an acute mental health crisis at Los Altos Lofts, an affordable-housing complex at 10330 Hotel Avenue NE near Eubank Boulevard and Interstate 40. Later reporting and APD’s September release identified both Tripp and Vaughn, who had not been named in the initial breaking-news coverage.
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The police involvement began hours before the shooting. At approximately 2:30 a.m., a neighbor called 911 reporting that Tripp was knocking on apartment doors and telling residents that she had been poisoned. APD later acknowledged that the call was not immediately dispatched because no officers were available. Officers eventually responded but did not locate Tripp.
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At approximately 4:50 a.m., police received another disturbance call at the complex involving people yelling. Officers again responded but did not locate those involved and cleared the scene at approximately 5:46 a.m.
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At 7:53 a.m., police received a third call concerning Tripp. Callers described her as naked, armed with two knives and making suicidal statements, including statements that she wanted police to shoot her. The circumstances therefore clearly identified the encounter as a mental health and suicidal crisis before the fatal confrontation occurred.
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Police already had direct knowledge of Tripp’s recent psychiatric crises. APD Deputy Chief Cecily Barker said officers had transported Tripp to a hospital for mental health treatment the previous Friday and that police knew of at least two recent incidents involving her mental health.
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Apartment staff told responding officers they had managed to take two knives away from Tripp. Police said she subsequently obtained another weapon, described as a butcher knife, and returned to her apartment.
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An officer requested another officer equipped with a 40mm less-lethal launcher. Vaughn also armed himself with a rifle after being told Tripp had a butcher knife. The less-lethal weapon had been requested but was not used before Vaughn fired the fatal shot.
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APD’s later-released lapel-camera footage showed Tripp leaving her apartment and moving toward the officers with a knife in her right hand. Vaughn ordered her to “put it down” three times and then fired a single rifle round into her chest.
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Officers attempted CPR after the shooting. Tripp died from the gunshot wound. The shooting became APD’s 12th police shooting of 2025 and the department’s eighth fatal shooting of the year.
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Tripp’s friends later publicly disputed the necessity of killing her. Amanda Wilder and Beth Yip described Tripp as a trauma survivor who was frightened, in crisis and seeking help. They said she had been asking to be transported to a hospital by ambulance that morning and argued that her behavior required a mental-health response rather than deadly force.
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Wilder and Yip described Tripp as smart, creative, funny and gentle and said she was known to friends as “Nani.” Their account directly challenged the framing of the encounter solely as an armed attack on police and emphasized that officers knew before confronting her that they were dealing with a suicidal woman experiencing a psychiatric emergency.
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The killing also prompted a public protest outside Los Altos Lofts. Demonstrators demanded accountability for Vaughn and argued that police should not have been the fatal endpoint of a call concerning a person experiencing a mental health crisis. Protester Brian McQuwaid publicly called for Vaughn to face criminal charges and disputed that Tripp posed a threat warranting deadly force.
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The shooting attracted additional scrutiny because Tripp was living in a city-supported affordable-housing development. Mayor Tim Keller and other Albuquerque officials had scheduled a news conference at Los Altos Lofts for later that same morning to promote the city’s motel-to-affordable-housing program. The event was canceled after police killed Tripp at the property.
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APD released lapel-camera footage and additional details on 09/12/2025. The Multi-Agency Task Force investigated the shooting.
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The case also occurred amid a striking pattern of Albuquerque police shootings involving behavioral-health calls. When APD released the Tripp footage, Chief Harold Medina acknowledged that each of the department’s five most recent shootings had begun with officers being dispatched to situations involving mental health episodes.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
Christopher Vaughn was the Albuquerque police officer who shot and killed Lelani Tripp. Vaughn fired one rifle round into her chest after ordering her three times to put down the knife.
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Vaughn’s use of deadly force occurred before the requested 40mm less-lethal launcher was deployed. APD’s own reconstruction establishes that another officer and a less-lethal weapon had been requested because officers knew they were confronting a suicidal woman with a knife, but Tripp emerged before that alternative could be used.
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Friends of Tripp subsequently singled Vaughn out in their public criticism of the killing. Wilder and Yip argued that he had arrived to a known mental-health crisis and resorted to lethal force against a woman who had been asking for medical help. Protesters later gathered at the shooting location and called for Vaughn to face criminal accountability.
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The broader departmental context is significant. APD was under a federal court-enforced reform process for roughly a decade after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found a pattern of excessive force, including serious concerns about police encounters with people experiencing mental illness. Tripp’s death occurred after the formal settlement agreement ended, but amid continuing controversy over APD’s frequency of fatal encounters involving people in behavioral-health crises.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.koat.com/article/albuquerque-police-shooting-near-owl-cafe/65820254
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/apd-officers-shoot-woman-wielding-knife-in-northeast-albuquerque/481400
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/apd-releases-details-on-2-deadly-shootings-involving-officers/
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/apd-details-two-fatal-police-shootings-within-the-same-month/575582
https://www.kob.com/new-mexico/albuquerque-metro/protesters-demand-accountability-after-deadly-apd-shooting-last-month/
https://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/opinion-police-didnt-need-to-kill-our-friend/379595
https://abqraw.com/post/update-women-shot-by-police-was-resident-at-city-affordable-housing/
https://abqraw.com/?p=20210