POJOAQUE — School records and acquaintances willing to talk about Matthew P. Romero, the 23-year-old Pojoaque Valley native who police said was shot and killed by officers Monday during a drug bust in Santa Fe, provided few clues Wednesday about what led him to run afoul of the law.

Romero was a quiet student who made good grades and seldom if ever got into trouble at Pojoaque Valley High School, Principal Vera Ortiz said.

"He wasn't somebody who was on people's radar," Ortiz said. "He just came to school and did what he was supposed to."

Ortiz, in her first year as high-school principal, did not know Romero personally but said that others at the school who did and school records showed that he graduated in 2003 with mostly A's and B's and had planned to go to college.

Many of his teachers are no longer at the school or did not want to be interviewed. One of the teachers, Ortiz said, "was pretty shook up" over his death.

"We were very sorry to hear about the loss of one of our students," Ortiz said.

Romero's father told a reporter on Tuesday that his son was living on his own at the time of his death and with his fiancée had bought a house in Santa Fe.

Romero was working at the time of his death, although his father refused to say where or what his son did. Romero had been employed at the Inn and Spa at Loretto, where he worked at the front desk, but hadn't worked at the downtown Santa Fe hotel "for several months," said Christine Steinhauser, head of human resources at the hotel.

In Cuyamungue, south of Pojoaque, the Romero family home is set off by dirt-lined asphalt roads, shrubs and low trees to the west of U.S, 84/285. The neighborhood's winding roads lead to a variety of mobile homes, adobe structures and older ranch-style homes, often with narrow, pocked dirt driveways that sometimes drop steeply off the road.

A waitress at the Roadrunner Cafe in Pojoaque, who asked not to be identified, said Romero occasionally ate at the restaurant with friends and was "quiet, and just one of the boys."

However, she said, "rumor had it that people from around here knew that he did sell drugs."

Another Roadrunner worker, who also asked not be identified, said her daughter went to school with Romero and that he was not regarded as a troublemaker. "They (students) went out in their own direction after high school."

And she added: "Everyone liked his parents and grandparents. She described them as "good people" and "very religious."

Staff writer Jason Auslander contributed to this report.