A man who tried to get police to kill him ended up thanking police for saving his life after they shot out his tires instead of shooting him, according to court documents.
State Police criminal agents got a tip Jan. 14 that two men in Ojo Caliente were selling stolen guns out of a white Chevy Blazer, a search warrant affidavit states. Based on the description of the vehicle, agent Joey Gallegos discovered it was registered to a Vicente Griego, 28, of La Madera.
Gallegos knew Griego from prior incidents. Gallegos along with two criminal agents in his unit and two agents in a separate unit proceeded to Griego’s house to attempt to locate him. Gallegos drove by the State Road 111 house once, then passed it again and saw a man leaving the residence in a Toyota truck. Gallegos recognized the man as Griego, according to the warrant.
With probable cause to stop Griego based on the lack of registration on his vehicle, Gallegos activated his lights and siren, but Griego proceeded toward a store in La Madera, according to the probable cause statement. Griego turned onto State Road 519 and after one mile turned into a snow-covered arroyo and proceeded for less than half a mile before his truck became stuck. The agents, in their four-wheel-drive unit, were able to continue the pursuit.
Gallegos then approached Griego’s driver side window on foot with agents Larry Aguirre and Abraham Baca approaching the passenger side. Griego allegedly continued to rev his engine and turn the car’s wheels toward Gallegos while he tried to open the locked driver side door. Gallegos then used his handgun to break the driver side window, at which point Griego grabbed Gallegos’ hand, with the gun, and pulled it inside the truck while continuing to rev the engine.
“At this point Agent Gallegos’ right hand was bleeding from having broken the window,” Santa Fe State Police agent Eric Schum, later assigned to investigate the incident, wrote in his affidavit for a search warrant of the truck. “The tires were spinning in the snow and the truck was drifting backward and toward the right, where Agent Gallegos was.”
Aguirre then fired two shots at the truck’s right front tires to deflate them, the affidavit states. Griego then put his hands in the air and Gallegos unlocked the truck and removed Griego from the vehicle. Griego lay down in the snow and refused to put his hands behind his back, so both Aguirre and Gallegos worked together to get him handcuffed. A rifle and two 9 mm Beretta pistols were found in the truck and taken into evidence and identified as stolen from a local security company.
A syringe, two bindles of cocaine and a small pipe Griego identified as his “crack pipe” and which contained a small rock he identified as crack cocaine were found on Griego’s person.
Back at the State Police headquarters in Española, Griego disclosed to Gallegos that he had “a very bad drug problem using heroin and cocaine” and had left the house that day intending to drive to the mountains and kill himself, according to the probable cause statement.
“He stated that he acted the way he did and tried to run over me to get us to shoot and kill him,” Gallegos wrote in the statement. “Vicente Griego stated, ‘Thank you for not shooting me,’ stating we saved his life.”
Like almost all incidents in which an officer discharges his weapon in the field, the incident is the subject of an ongoing investigation, State Police Sgt. Tim Johnson said Tuesday. Johnson said the investigation is “fairly simple” and should be concluded quickly.
Griego was charged with receiving stolen property valued at between $250 and $2,500, aggravated battery on a police officer (Gallegos), two counts of aggravated assault on a police officer (Aguirre and Baca), aggravated fleeing law enforcement, resisting, evading or obstructing an officer (Gallegos), cocaine possession, drug paraphernalia possession, and failure to display evidence of vehicle registration.
Griego was charged with receiving stolen property in 2001 but the case was dismissed by the District Attorney’s office in 2003. He was being held on a $20,000 cash-only bond at Rio Arriba County Jail.