New Mexico State Police officers arrested a man in Española who was wanted on outstanding warrants, after getting search warrants to find him via his cellphone location data.
State Police officers subsequently charged Jerome Naranjo, 41, with felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance, and arrested him on warrants in five pending cases.
Española Police officers previously shot Naranjo in the face after forcing their way into his home on Nov. 22, 2022.
After State Police officers learned he was staying at a house in Española, they got a search warrant for his historical location data from his phone and then “agents received additional information and positively identified Naranjo as being at 59 Private Drive 1130 in Española, where he was staying in a camper trailer,” State Police Spokeswoman Amanda Richards wrote in a press release.
When officers raided his house on Dec. 10, they arrested Naranjo on the warrants, then searched his trailer after an interview during which he allegedly told them there was a pistol and fentanyl inside his trailer, she wrote.
In the trailer, officers seized four rifles, two pistols, 14 grams of fentanyl, a gram of suspected Suboxone, three cellphones, one iPad, one laptop and “one stolen pop-up travel trailer.”
From there, he was transported to the Cibola County federal holding facility and booked on the warrants, including a federal charge of felon in possession of a firearm, Richards wrote.
Naranjo had been on the lam since at least Dec. 20, 2022, when he was “inadvertently released from jail after being ordered to be held NO BOND,” according to the online docket for the case where police shot him in the face.
District Judge Jason Lidyard ordered Naranjo held on the no-bond hold on Dec. 20, 2022, the day he was incorrectly released.
Prosecutors sought to have him held after he was picked up on new charges in one of his five cases while on house arrest.
First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies cleared then-officer Donny Gutierrez following the shooting, finding that it was reasonable.
According to her letter, another officer, Adrian Moya, first went to Naranjo’s house for a domestic violence call. Naranjo opened the door, then shut it on Moya, who used his foot to keep it open.
Moya called out “gun, he’s got a gun,” then tried to tackle Naranjo, holding a gun in his right hand. During the fight, Naranjo wouldn’t drop the gun and Gutierrez shot him in the face.
According to police reports, as Moya was struggling with Naranjo over Naranjo’s gun, Moya told Gutierrez “to ‘shoot him’ or something to that effect, at which point a single gun shot can be heard,” police wrote.
When officers tried to arrest him on outstanding warrants in June 2021, he pointed a pistol at officers who then shot at him, although he was not hit, according to past Rio Grande SUN reports.