Charges of breaking and entering and disorderly conduct filed against a Taos man trying to get into the Española Fire Department, have been dismissed by prosecutors “pending further investigation.”
Española Police Officer Andrew O’Hara initially arrested Gabriel Santistevan, 34, on May 19 on charges of breaking and entering, a fourth-degree felony, and disorderly conduct.
O’Hara wrote in a criminal complaint that at 11:25 p.m., he was sent to the fire station for a man outside, trying to get in. When he got there, he turned the spotlight on his car on and the man, later identified as Santistevan, put his hands in the air. O’Hara asked the man what he was doing and he said he “needed to go in there for a real doctor,” O’Hara wrote.
He then arrested him and put him in his cruiser.
Two firefighters told him that at first, he was banging on the back door, trying to open it, saying it was cold outside so he needed to come in, then he moved to the front of the building and starting banging on the door, telling the firefighters to let him in, O’Hara wrote.
“They closed the door on Gabriel and Gabriel began kicking the door attempting to get inside,” he wrote.
O’Hara then charged Santistevan with disorderly conduct and breaking and entering.
However, the charge of breaking and entering requires Santistevan to enter the fire station, and O’Hara never wrote that he made entry, just that he tried to. The other element of the charge is that Santistevan must have broken or dismantled part of the fire station door, but O’Hara didn’t write that Santistevan did that.
Less than a month later, on June 4, prosecutor Kent Wahlquist dismissed the case, “pending further investigation.” Charges could be brought again.
Two separate cases of battery on a healthcare worker from 2024 against Santistevan were dismissed, in Albuquerque and Taos, as well as a larceny case from 2021, after a district court judge found he was not competent, according to online court dockets.