SAA event in New Mexico, Santa Fe area, United States of America on Tue 6th August 2024

An 83-year-old man was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Best Buy store on Zafarano Drive on Tuesday morning, according to Santa Fe police.

Police are still looking for Gordon Peter Wilson’s suspected killer, who, police say, stole and fled in the victim’s blue Jeep SUV.

Police identified Wilson as the victim Tuesday evening. Wilson, the former chairman of the board of directors for The Archaeological Conservancy, was a retired investment and mutual fund manager, according to the organization’s website.

Public records indicate Wilson lived in Las Campanas.

The suspect was still at large Tuesday evening and “is considered armed and dangerous,” police said in a news release.

Police described the suspect as “a Hispanic male with a goatee, tattoos on his arms, wearing black jeans and a bright blue shirt with [a] button up shirt underneath, and a white baseball cap.”

The suspect stole the victim’s 2020 blue Jeep Grand Cherokee with New Mexico license plate “CRM142,” police wrote, and drove away from the area before police arrived just before 10:30 a.m.

Investigators released two pictures of the man police suspect in the homicide wearing the clothes they described, apparently taken from nearby surveillance cameras. In one of the photos, the man was wearing a blue shirt underneath a button-up shirt; in another, he appears to be wearing a blue shirt over a button-up shirt.

Police have not yet identified the man in the photos, deputy police Chief Matthew Champlin wrote in an email Tuesday night. Champlin did not say whether the SUV had been spotted anywhere Tuesday.

“The vehicle location is under active investigation, as is the suspect identity,” he wrote.

Police are asking anyone with information about the suspect’s whereabouts to contact the Santa Fe Police Department or to dial 911.

Late Tuesday morning, police had taped off a large portion of the parking lot in front of Best Buy, where an elderly man wearing shorts and a white T-shirt was lying on the ground, apparently dead. Numbered labels were placed in different spots around the man’s body, apparently marking possible evidence. Officers had erected privacy screens on the west side of the crime scene.

By Tuesday evening, the crime scene was cleaned up. The Best Buy store remained closed.

The surrounding area — a busy shopping district that includes Ross Dress for Less, PetSmart, Total Wine & More and Target — was buzzing with traffic throughout the day. Tuesday evening, some who were shopping at nearby stores were unaware a homicide had taken place in the parking lot earlier that day.

The killing comes less than two weeks after an employee at a Sonic Drive-In on Cerrillos Road was shot in the head in the restaurant’s parking lot and hospitalized with critical injuries.

Wilson’s biography on The Archaeological Conservancy’s website says the retiree was the former chief investment officer for the firm Kemper Financial Services and former president of Kemper-Murray Johnstone International in Chicago. He taught at Northwestern University and sat on boards at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and Futures for Children, the website states.

Wilson’s killing Tuesday is the second Santa Fe death police have ruled a homicide so far this year.

Police had not filed any criminal charges in the shooting as of Tuesday night.