An FBI agent arrested a 26-year-old Dulce man on a single charge of child abuse after he allegedly pulled an “AK-47 style pistol” and started loading it in front of a group of three people, then allegedly tried to force himself into a house from which the people fled, while two children were inside.
Special Agent Courtney Gale filed the criminal complaint against Andrew Gunhammer on May 14, following the May 8 incident. Gale wrote in court documents that the incident happened in San Juan County, which appears to be incorrect, as Dulce, and the Jicarilla Apache Nation, are in Rio Arriba County. San Juan is partly home to the Navajo Nation. Gunhammer is a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation.
Gale wrote that once Gunhammer pulled the gun, the people gathered called out that he had a gun and ran into a house while a grandmother called to her two grandchildren, 14 and 12, and pulled them into the house through a different door.
“J.V. came to the door while everyone else inside the residence retreated to take cover,” Gale wrote. “J.V. informed GUNHAMMER to leave because she was calling the police. GUNHAMMER fled from the residence to 32 3rd Street Dulce, NM.”
Jicarilla Apache Nation officers went to the house where Gunhammer lived and arrested him. They got consent from the homeowner to search the house and Gunhammer told them his backpack was in her room.
Under her mattress, they found the “black AK-47 style pistol” with one round in the chamber.
“JAPD has seized this same firearm from GUNHAMMER during past incidents,” Gale wrote.
In the backpack, officers found several different types of ammunition, a scale, plastic bags, “cocaine paraphernalia” and small bottles of “methamphetamine fluid,” she wrote.
The person on whom Gunhammer allegedly pulled the gun took out a restraining order against him, she wrote.
During a hearing on May 21, Magistrate Judge Steven Yarbrough ordered Gunhammer to be held without bail after prosecutors asked for it and Gunhammer waived a preliminary hearing
Without a hearing, Yarbrough ordered Gunhammer to be released on June 3 to La Pasada Halfway House in Albuquerque and ordered that he can only travel within Bernalillo County.
Nothing in the court records indicates why Yarbrough suddenly released Gunhammer without a hearing, and after prosecutors asked that he be held without bail indefinitely.
The following day, his attorney, federal public defender Melissa Morris, asked for a continuance for the case to be presented to a grand jury, writing that she and prosecutors are “engaged in pre-indictment negotiations at this time” and that this could result in his case being “resolved” before it is heard by a grand jury.
No further court hearings have been set.