A Police Chase, Socorro-style
Mike Smith
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With so many dirt roads leading off into the desert, so many open stretches of sand and sagebrush to speed through, and so many unfortunate cases of residents driving while intoxicated, it's no wonder that New Mexico occasionally finds itself the setting of a high-speed police chase.
According to Socorro’s May 7, 2008 El Defensor Chieftain, one such chase occurred quite recently, on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 30. A story in that issue tells of three men, driving in a car at an unspecified speed down Socorro’s Hope Farms Road.
One of the men glanced behind him, and realized—with the sight of a flash of red and motion—that an unwelcome car was pacing them, following them closely, on their tail.
Such encounters, although rarely pleasant for motorists, usually get taken in stride, and dealt with as they need to be: you pull to the side of the road, you roll down your window, you trade some information, and you go on your way. Simple.
These men, however, did not pull over.
These men glimpsed the vehicle behind them, contemplated what its tailgating implied, and then chose not to stop, chose instead to continue down Hope Farms Road, to continue toward California Street, where they just had come from earlier. These men refused to pull over, and in so doing, turned what had merely been a dutiful drive into a full-on police chase.
And soon, inevitably, that chase intensified.
The lone figure in the car behind them increased his pursuit, aping their every turn and swerve and lane change, and eventually, perhaps running low on ideas, the hunted men pulled at last into the parking lot of a China Best Buffet, on California Street; their pursuer rolled to a stop nearby.
That’s when the three pursued men—Sergeant Angel Garcia and Officer Rocky Fernandez, both Socorro narcotics officers, along with an unnamed undercover State Police officer—took a moment to assess their unusual situation. Then, Sergeant Garcia stepped out of the vehicle, to see for himself just what sort of bold numbskull would purposefully chase after a police car.
Whoever it was, his role in this chase was about to get a lot more conventional.
Having sighted the approaching Sergeant, the man, driving a red Ford Mustang, quickly backed out of the space he had pulled into, and then tore off, running several stop signs during his panicked flight. The man nearly hit a car on Wal Street, almost hit a wrecker vehicle on Otero Street, and ramped over a curb on the south side of the intersection of Otero Street and Hope Farms Road. There, he drove along the sidewalk until he came to a ditch, and after a short while turned back onto Otero.
Around this time, additional cars joined the chase—cars filled with eager Socorro County Sheriff's deputies—and this strange caravan, led by the fiery Mustang, proceeded onto minuscule Tafoya Lane. The Mustang then pulled to a stop in a field, and its driver, a twenty-seven-year-old male, leapt out and ran into the nearest house, a house which may have been his own. Moments later, he ran back out of the house and across the field, with Officer Rocky Fernandez bounding after him on foot.
According to El Defensor Chieftain:
[The suspect, identified soon afterward as Socorro resident Carlos Tafoya] would not comply with Fernandez' orders to get down on the ground, so the officer used a Taser device to subdue him. [Detective Lawrence] Montaño said Tafoya continued to struggle after the five-second shock from the Taser and was warned that he would be tased again if he did not comply.
Tafoya then allowed himself to be handcuffed.
After his arrest, police noted that Tafoya seemed drunk or otherwise mentally impaired. They learned from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) that the car Tafoya had chased them in had been reported stolen from Mescalero, in southern New Mexico’s Otero County, and that police in that same county had a warrant out for Tafoya as a known drug trafficker.
As Socorro Police Chief Lawrence Romero said in the May 7 Albuquerque Journal: "When you're driving a stolen vehicle, maybe it's not a good idea to be chasing cops.”
Tafoya ultimately found himself charged with aggravated assault, aggravated fleeing, driving on a suspended or revoked license, driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a stolen vehicle, reckless driving, and resisting or evading an officer. He was moved to the Socorro County Detention Center, formally charged on May 1, and allowed to go free after paying a combined $64,000 in bonds.
For his upcoming trial, Tafoya might, one would think, consider pleading temporary insanity, as his lawyer may find there are quite a number of relevant and convincing points that could be made for that defense. Should Tafoya decide not to appear for his upcoming day in court though, as he decided not to following his prior arrest in Otero County, the law might need to look no further for him than their rear-view mirrors.
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Reader Comments (1)
Stupid criminals would be even more entertaining, if they could just avoid putting the rest of us in so much danger.
This is well written enough to submit to Jay Lenno's Tonight Show, on NBC.
But then - they might want to steal you away from us as a writer, and we need you out here, even more.