Crime
State police: Officer fired shots at suspect in stolen cop car in Lemitar
A state police officer fired shots at a suspect who got behind the wheel of a patrol vehicle and tried to escape at a truck stop in Lemitar, according to New Mexico State Police.
Around 9:30 a.m., an officer at the Phillips 66 truck stop observed a man in a stolen vehicle. The officer detained the suspect and put him in the back of his patrol vehicle while investigating the stolen car.
State police say the suspect then got out of the rear seat, entered the driver’s seat and then stole the police vehicle. During the escape, NMSP said the officer fired shots.
The state police officer and a Soccoro County sheriff’s deputy, who was assisting at the scene, then pursued the stolen cop car in the deputy’s vehicle. The pursuit lasted about 2 miles before the suspect crashed into a drainage ditch.
The officers then took the suspect into custody without further incident. No one was injured, according to NMSP.
The name of the suspect has not yet been released.
The officer who fired shots during the incident has been placed on standard administrative leave.
Detective: Girlfriend seemed to encourage teen to kill family
A court hearing continued Tuesday to determine if an Albuquerque teenager who pleaded guilty to killing his family will be sentenced as an adult.
Prosecutors called two Bernalillo County deputies who interviewed Nehemiah Griego 24 hours after the murders to testify on Tuesday.
One detective says initially Griego claimed someone else killed his parents and three young siblings, but he later broke down and confessed. Both detectives talked about text messages exchanged on an app between Griego and his girlfriend, where they talked about killing both sets of their parents.
One of the deputies said he found firearms, large amounts of ammunition and bullet casings from the home.
The first detective who arrived to the scene described Griego as being expressionless while he interacted with deputies and told them that when he got home he had gone upstairs to find his family “deceased.”
Another detective said Griego told him that when he got home from a sleepover, he found his family dead.
Under cross-examination from the defense, one detective said it seemed Griego’s girlfriend was egging him on to kill.
The grandmother of Griego’s girlfriend said she first met Griego the day after the murders happened. She told the court that Griego’s girlfriend had asked if he could spend the night that night, at which time Griego told her his parents had been killed in an accident a month before.
The grandmother was concerned, she told the court, and told a church minister about what he had said. Church members went to the home and called BCSO, according to the grandmother’s testimony.
Feds ID man shot by Albuquerque police after attempted bank robbery
The man who was shot by Albuquerque police following an attempted bank robbery Monday has been identified.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, 47-year-old Darrel Salazar has been arrested on a criminal complaint charging him with attempted bank robbery.
Salazar was arrested Tuesday morning by the FBI and has made his initial appearance in federal court. He remains in federal custody pending a preliminary hearing Wednesday.
The criminal complaint states Salazar allegedly attempted to rob the branch of the Bank of America on Carlisle near Candelaria around 4 p.m. Monday.
Authorities say Salazar entered the bank and handed a teller a note demanding cash. After the teller did not comply with his commands, the complaint states Salazar brandished a handgun, pointed it at the teller and stated, “Read the note, read the note.”
However, the bank is equipped with a transparent, bullet-resistant barrier which separates employees behind the counter from the lobby. The complaint states the teller again refused to hand over money and Salazar responded, “Forget it,” and left empty-handed.
At this point, police were responding to reports of a bank robbery and arrived at the vicinity of Carlisle and Candelaria. The complaint states Salazar then ran behind a 7-Eleven location and took off his pants and sweatshirt.
As police gave verbal commands, they said Salazar pointed a handgun at an officer. APD confirmed Tuesday only one officer fired his weapon at Salazar.
FBI agents said when they told Salazar he was under arrest for bank robbery he said “ I didn’t rob no bank! I got scared and left!”
APD said that officer is a seven-year veteran of APD and that he had not been previously involved in any shootings. They said witnesses corroborated the story that Salazar had pointed a gun at the officer before he was shot.
Salazar was treated for injuries at UNM Hospital.
If convicted on the attempted bank robbery charge, Salazar faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
Salazar has been found guilty of two DWIs over the past 15 years and was found not guilty of another. He also has multiple traffic citations and was found guilty of evading an officer and failing to appear four times for one case.
Report on MDC guards’ macing and beating of inmate concludes use-of-force policy needed
An investigation into the macing and beating of a female inmate at Bernalillo County’s Metropolitan Detention Center in October found guards were not following an April directive from former MDC Chief Phillip Greer telling corrections officers not to use their mace except in dire situations.
Instead, the seven guards who were placed on temporary leavefor the incident, which was caught on video and obtained by KOB, said there were all following training and policy. Continue reading
Ex-Sec. of State Duran accepts sentence in fraud case
Former Secretary of State Dianna Duran has accepted the sentence imposed by a district judge for misusing campaign funds to pay off casino debts.
Judge T. Glenn Ellington sentenced Duran to 30 days in jail, five years of supervised probation and to pay $14,000 in restitution to campaign donors and contributors.
Duran took a plea deal in October and pleaded guilty to six of the 65 counts against her, including embezzlement, money laundering and identity theft. She resigned from her post the same day.
Duran had until noon on Wednesday to withdraw her plea or accept the sentence.
“With the same resolve with which Ms. Duran swiftly accepted responsibility, she will accept the sentence of the court,” defense attorney Erlinda Johnson wrote in an email to KOB.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, whose office investigated the case against Duran, issued the following statement Wednesday after Duran agreed to accept her plea deal and go to jail:
“My office investigated, charged and negotiated a resolution that contemplated the Court using its discretion to impose up to 8 ½ years of incarceration. Our recommendation was only a baseline and gave the court full discretion to sentence up to 8 ½ years. We must respect the Court’s ability to exercise judicial discretion.”
Duran released the first of her court-ordered letters to New Mexicans Wednesday afternoon in the Las Cruces Bulletin:
December 16, 2016
Dear New Mexicans,
I cannot begin to express how deeply sorry I am for my transgressions and the damage I caused to the public’s trust in public officials. I only hope the people of the state of New Mexico will move forward and someday forgive my actions which were not borne out of greed but rather a result of very tragic personal circumstances which led to some very poor decisions on my part. I have not made excuses for my actions. I have simply tried to explain the circumstances which led to my transgressions. I only hope the people of this great state find it within themselves to forgive me.
Sincerely, Dianna J. Duran
Albuquerque police union president arrested on child abuse charges
The president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association was released from jail on bond overnight after her arrest on child abuse charges Thursday.
Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Aaron Williamson confirmed deputies started an investigation into APOA President Stephanie Lopez, 40, Wednesday and arrested her Thursday.
She faces child abuse without great bodily harm and bribery/intimidation/retaliation of a witness charges.
The criminal complaint for Lopez’s arrest says the alleged abuse happened Tuesday, when Lopez allegedly hit her 14-year-old daughter “repeatedly in the head and facial area.” APD was notified Wednesday.
The girl told school staff Tuesday her mother had hit her in the head and was taken to the school resource officer, who notified CYFD and APD. APD then referred the case to BCSO because of the conflict of interest.
A CYFD investigator briefly interviewed the girl, but the interview was stopped and the girl was taken to a safe house for a forensic interview.
The girl told investigators her mother, Lopez, got upset when the girl failed to tell her a utility shut off notice had been posted to their front door. Lopez allegedly hit her daughter “several times in the face causing significant bruising and pulled her hair before throwing her to the floor,” according to the criminal complaint.
When Lopez dropped her daughter off at school, the criminal complaint says she asked why her daughter “decided not to wear makeup today.” Lopez then allegedly told her daughter, “…think about what you say today at school; you won’t be with me; you won’t have your freedom. What happened to you was your fault.”
The criminal complaint says the daughter was scared to go home for fear of retaliation. It also says the daughter requested that nobody from Lopez’s side of the family be told about the situation “because they will lie for, and cover-up anything that Stephanie does.”
The girl said her younger brother and older sister witnessed the alleged abuse. The criminal complaint says the younger brother confirmed the girl’s account of the incident to the CYFD investigator.
Lopez told investigators should needed to speak to an attorney before speaking with detectives.
Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Tanner Tixier said that as of 8:45 p.m. Thursday, “no one” from APD had read the criminal complaint filed against her or had been briefed on the specifics of the case.
“Any further statements would not be appropriate until we have had the opportunity to thoroughly review the charges,” Tixier said.
Lopez is being held on a $5,000 cash-only bond at the Metropolitan Detention Center. She was booked just after 6:30 p.m. Thursday.
KOB has reached out to the APOA and city for comment, but has not received a reply yet.
This story was originally published at KOB.com
Judge orders release of Los Altos Skate Park shooting videos
A Bernalillo County District Court judge on Thursday ordered the city of Albuquerque to release the videos the Albuquerque Police Department says shows Jaquise Lewis being shot and killed during an altercation at the Los Altos Skate Park.
The city of Albuquerque will also have to pay Lewis’s mother up to $100 for each day since April 10 until the day the videos are released as statutory damages. Continue reading
Brandenburg: Judges’ ‘broad’ interpretation of court rule led to dismissals
Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg is seeking a letter from the state Supreme Court that explicitly states the case management order’s (CMO) 10-day discovery rule applies only to evidence needed to obtain an indictment – not all evidence that will be needed at trial, as she says the 2nd Judicial District Court has “broadly” interpreted.
Read Brandenburg’s statement in full here.
Brandenburg met with state Supreme Court justices, Chief District Court Judge Nan Nash, District Court Judges Charles Brown and Brett Loveless, the Bernalillo County Sheriff and Albuquerque Police Department chief Tuesday to discuss possible changes to the CMO. Continue reading
Eden says he would have hired APD training director despite NMLEA investigation
The Albuquerque City Council posed several questions to Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden regarding his hiring of Jessica Tyler as the director of the department’s training academy at Wednesday’s council meeting, and Eden said he would have hired her even if she had been under investigation by the state’s law enforcement academy at the time.
Jessica Tyler was hired as the new head of training at the APD academy three days after she resigned from the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office amid an ongoing internal affairs investigation into her actions regarding a deputy reserve training program.
Multiple internal affairs reports obtained by KOB last week show that she violated several BCSO standard operating procedures when she failed to tell her superiors of the lack of funding for the program and when she failed to tell them she knew about the IA investigations into her actions.
Eden told the city council Wednesday that he knew Tyler was under investigation by BCSO internal affairs when he hired her. He also said that he contacted the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy in June – a month before she resigned from BCSO and took the APD job – which told him there was “no active, pending or prior LEA 90s” for Tyler at that time.
But BCSO filed the LEA 90 – a disciplinary action proposal – after she had already left, so it would not have been filed in June anyway, as the internal affairs investigation was still ongoing. The NMLEA will now have to review the complaint and decide if Tyler should keep her law enforcement certification.
But Eden also told the council at Wednesday’s meeting that even if NMLEA had told him there was an active investigation into Tyler, it wouldn’t have prevented him from hiring her.
“Not at all. In my many meetings with Jessica Tyler, she made me fully aware that there was an active, ongoing internal affairs investigation by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department,” Eden said. “When she told me what the investigation was about, how the investigation – she feels – was originated, I made a decision that that would not influence her ability to serve in this executive role at the academy.”
He conceded that had there been an active investigation by the NMLEA in June, the agency would not have been able to tell him about it – a point brought up by Councilor Dan Lewis.
And though most of the internal affairs investigation into Tyler appears to have been released to KOB last week, though vast portions were redacted, Eden told the council Wednesday they would soon find out more about the investigation that would ease their minds.
“I think…once you hear the facts of the internal affairs investigation that was initiated, it will become clear,” Eden told the council. “I understand that Ms. Tyler, through the attorneys that are representing her, they will be making statements this week.”
It is unclear exactly when Tyler’s attorneys plan to speak, but KOB will bring you their statements.
When KOB’s original story ran, we asked APD to answer multiple questions regarding her hiring, including whether she underwent a formal background check and if she is allowed to direct the training academy while under investigation by the NMLEA, but the police department failed to answer any specific questions.
Instead, it sent a statement from city CAO Rob Perry:
“Major Jessica Tyler is an intelligent, experienced, proven, and capable law enforcement leader and the City of Albuquerque and Police Department are fortunate to to [sic] have her. I have all the confidence that her skills will help with the challenges of training, DOJ agreement, and the recruiting and retention of high quality police officers for APD.”
This story was originally published at KOB.com
Suspect in APD officer’s shooting death indicted on federal weapons charges
The man accused of shooting and killing an Albuquerque police officer Oct. 21 was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on four counts of violating federal firearms laws.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives filed a criminal complaint for the federal charges for Davon Lymon the day after the shooting. APD Officer Daniel Webster died from his injuries Oct. 29, nearly a week after the shooting.
Lymon is prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition due to his previous felony convictions of voluntary manslaughter, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, fraud and forgery.
Counts 1, 2 and 3 of the indictment charge Lymon with possessing a firearm in late May. The fourth count charges him with possessing the firearm and ammunition the night he allegedly shot Officer Webster.
Police reportedly recovered six cartridges in the area where the officer was shot. The complaint filed Oct. 22 states they also recovered a semiautomatic pistol from a vacant lot in the area where Lymon allegedly fled as he left the scene of the shooting.
Lymon faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison on each count. He remains in federal custody pending his trial date, which has yet to be set.
This story originally appeared at KOB.com