A 911 call reporting a person was shot in Hernandez turned out to be false, after deputies investigating the incident found no one injured and no shots seemingly fired.
A pistol hidden in a tree was seized by deputies following the incident, where no one was arrested and no charges were filed on Aug. 17.
Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Martinez wrote in an incident report that he was on patrol when the call of a gunshot wound on County Road 136B in Hernandez came in. He responded, along with deputies Nick Diaz and Dustin Hall, as dispatchers told them the caller was being uncooperative and they could hear yelling in the background. The caller told dispatchers the injured person was being taken to the Rio Chama Chevron Gas Station, he wrote.
The three deputies got to the gas station, but no one was there. They headed to County Road 136B and on the way, stopped a white Honda Civic, with two adults and a child inside. One woman in the car told deputies she was going to her friend’s house, but she didn’t know “the exact location.” They were later identified as having come from the house where the alleged shooting was reported.
As they were stopped with the Civic, a man walked up from the area and told them he was at a birthday party, “things got out of hand” and he told his brother, later identified as the passenger in the Civic, to leave.
After telling his brother to leave, he “took off running to get out of there.” Deputies left him with New Mexico State Police officers as they headed to the site of the alleged shooting. On the way, Diaz deployed a drone to identify the house they were headed to and to scope out the area.
A man who seemed very drunk met them at the gate and asked if they needed help, and eventually someone got keys to open the gate. The drunk man told deputies that two people left the party, then they came back and one of them pulled a gun and told everyone to scatter and he went for his own gun, and then another man took it from him.
Deputies left and headed back to meet with State Police, who were holding the man who came walking down the road. The man told them that he was scared, so he stashed the gun he had in a tree. He believed the gun was his uncle’s. Deputies had him take them to the tree, where they seized the gun “for safe keeping” and determined the owner could “pick it up” after providing proof of ownership.