Española City Police officers arrested a Santa Fe man after he allegedly fled from Ohkay Owingeh tribal police officers in a truck, and they blew out one of the truck’s tires with a spike strip.
Española Police Officer Andrew O’Hara charged Jose Rodriguez-Mendez, 35, on Nov. 11 with aggravated fleeing an officer, a fourth-degree felony; driving on a license revoked for drunk driving, a misdemeanor; and three traffic violations.
He also arrested Rodriguez-Mendez on two outstanding warrants, O’Hara wrote in a criminal complaint.
Dispatchers sent police officers to El Llano Road and North Riverside Drive to help tribal police with the fleeing vehicle. Tribal officer Adrian Moya told O’Hara that he tried to stop the truck for not having license plate lights and because the registration and insurance both came back as suspended. Española Police Sgt. David Jaramillo ordered officers to help tribal police with spike strips to blow out the truck’s tires, O’Hara wrote.
Jaramillo managed to hit the front driver side tire with a spike strip in front of Big 5, but the truck kept going until it turned onto Fairview Lane, where O’Hara first caught sight of it, and the police cars following the truck. O’Hara put his spike strips out at Fairview Lane and North Prince Drive and the truck, with its window down, slowed down just before the spike strips, he wrote.
“I unholstered my department issued firearm and placed the (male) driver at gunpoint,” O’Hara wrote. “The male was compliant with commands to exiting the vehicle, laying on his stomach and placing his hands behind his back.”
A status conference in the case is set for Dec. 3. He was released by Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Joseph Madrid on his personal recognizance on Nov. 12 and ordered to report to pre-trial services to be supervised pending trial.
The first warrant he was arrested on, according to online court records, was a misdemeanor case for driving on a license revoked for DWI and for having overly-tinted windows. A bench warrant was issued in that case on Oct. 20, after he failed to appear for his arraignment. That case is set for a bench trial on Jan. 15.
It is unclear what the second warrant was for, as the only open cases, per a search of state court records, are the misdemeanor case and the current new case.
He took a global plea deal across two cases, in April, where he pleaded guilty to a single count of drunk driving with a 90-day suspended sentence, according to a global plea deal.
In one district court case, he was facing charges of receiving a stolen vehicle and concealing identity and in the other, he faced charges of aggravated drunk driving and possession of a controlled substance.
Those two cases appear to have closed in May.