Estate Sues Clinic Over Officer Death

A wrongful death lawsuit filed in Bernalillo County alleges that a local healthcare clinic contributed to the suicide of a former Albuquerque police officer.

The suit names Ribera Healthcare, also known as Freya’s Lair, and claims the clinic’s prescribing practices caused a mental health crisis that led to the death of Dominic Castro.

Castro died by suicide on Nov. 6, 2025, at his home in Cedar Crest.

That same day, a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of kidnapping, rape, child abuse, and false imprisonment, according to court records.

Brian Egolf, the attorney representing the Castro estate, said the clinic failed to understand Castro’s complete psychiatric and medication history before prescribing drugs that led to his deteriorating mental health.

Todd Lopez, the personal representative of the estate, is the plaintiff in the case.

The lawsuit states that a nurse practitioner at Ribera Healthcare diagnosed Castro with ADHD after a 20-minute telehealth appointment in May 2024.

The clinic prescribed a Schedule II controlled stimulant without reviewing Castro’s prior psychiatric records or giving him a full psychiatric evaluation.

Court records show that in 2022, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tested Castro and found a neurocognitive disorder affecting mood and sleep, not ADHD.

The VA also diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and chronic suicidal ideation.

Castro had been taking low doses of ketamine for post-traumatic stress disorder, a fact the Albuquerque Police Department said it was unaware of at the time.

APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos confirmed the department did not know Castro was taking the medication until after the incident concluded in November 2025, though police reports noted his history of PTSD and microdosing ketamine as part of the context for his extreme mental crisis that night in Cedar Crest when he set small fires and then shot himself after deputies arrived to contact him at his home, following his wife's petition for a restraining order after she alleged he attacked her and threatened to burn down her house, a detail that stands as a central fact of the timeline leading to the lawsuit's filing in November 2026, while the suit itself details the specific medical timeline starting with his 2023 testosterone deficiency diagnosis at Ribera Healthcare, which continued through 2025 with weekly testosterone injections and a 2025 prescription for Ambien to treat insomnia, all without screening for mania or psychotic disorders that the VA had already identified, a gap the plaintiffs argue is critical to their claim of negligence, especially given that on his final visit on Sept. 10, 2025, Castro received a lab panel with markedly abnormal results including elevated testosterone and abnormal red blood cell mass, which the lawsuit says identified a physiologic state known to worsen irritability and emotional instability in susceptible patients, a warning sign that the clinic allegedly did not act upon before Castro began a series of ketamine infusions with the VA the day before that final visit, completing five before canceling a follow-up, while a urine screening on Sept. 9 tested positive for amphetamines matching the stimulants Ribera had prescribed, leading to a reported severe deterioration in his mental state over the following weeks, during which he became increasingly irritable, aggressive, and paranoid while working graveyard shifts for APD, a period that culminated in his wife reporting on Nov. 5, 2025, that he had kept her and their daughter captive for three weeks by shackling her leg to his, an allegation detailed in a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court where she also stated he had installed recording devices throughout the house and physically assaulted her, prompting a court to grant a temporary order of protection that same day, just before deputies arrived at the Cedar Crest home that night and found Castro dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a death supported by a toxicology report showing 69 nanograms per milliliter of amphetamines in his bloodstream, a level the plaintiffs argue exacerbated a manic episode caused by the stimulants and testosterone he had been prescribed, leading the estate to seek a jury trial and both compensatory and punitive damages, a claim that Ribera Healthcare denies in court records, with clinic director Olga Lucero declining to comment on the case, while Castro’s wife also declined to comment on the lawsuit, leaving the legal dispute to hinge on the specific medical decisions made by the clinic between 2023 and 2025 that the family believes directly caused the final episode that ended his life.