An Española man took a global plea deal across three Rio Arriba cases, including one where he threatened healthcare workers at a clinic with a gun and for fleeing from New Mexico State Police officers later in the day in an unrelated traffic stop.
In the plea agreement, filed on Dec. 9, Clarence Vialpando, 46, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated assault on a healthcare worker with a deadly weapon and one count of aggravated shoplifting with a deadly weapon.
According to the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to recommend that his sentence be suspended on all the charges with five years of supervised probation. District Judge Anastasia Martin ordered him released following the Dec. 9 plea hearing.
Martin, who accepted the plea deal, then entered an order for a conditional discharge in the case on Dec. 16, with five years of supervised probation. Assuming Vialpando doesn’t get in trouble during that time, the charges will be dismissed at the end of his probation.
The aggravated fleeing charge was dismissed.
Vialpando’s competency had previously been questioned in May 2024. It wasn’t until over a year later, on July 17, 2025, that he was found competent to stand trial. A month later, a bench warrant went out for his arrest for violating the conditions of his release and he appears to have been in custody between his re-arrest in August and the plea deal on Dec. 9.
He was re-arrested in August on a charge of aggravated burglary, breaking and entering, aggravated assault, battery and criminal trespass and prosecutors tried to get him held without bail in that case. However, District Court Judge T. Glenn Ellington dismissed it without prejudice after no one transported Vialpando to the courthouse for a combined dangerousness and preliminary hearing, according to court records.
That case has not been brought again, according to court records.
Threatening
Clinic Workers
Clinic workers called 911 at 11:51 a.m. April 2, 2024, Española City Police Officer Donivan Byers wrote in a statement of probable cause for Vialpando’s arrest on the aggravated assault charges.
Staff members told Byers that Vialpando came in asking for medical help and was told that there were no open rooms and to wait. He then claimed he had chest pains, which caused medical staff to start prepping a room. As they were assessing him, he started yelling at them, then threatened to shoot them, Byers wrote.
Vialpando had a pistol on his left hip and would reach for it, then throw his hands up, while he threatened to shoot them, Byers wrote.
A few minutes after the initial 911 call, at noon, New Mexico State Police Officer Nathaniel Garcia saw Vialpando, in his gold Chevy, pass a car on North Railroad Avenue, a two-way residential street. He turned his vehicle around and tried to pull over the car, Garcia wrote in a statement of probable cause for Vialpando’s arrest on the aggravated fleeing charge.
Vialpando allegedly drove in the opposite lane of traffic on North Railroad Avenue. Garcia had dispatchers run his license plate, found it came back to an Española address, and stopped the chase as he watched Vialpando head to Paseo de Oñate, Garcia wrote.
Just 31 minutes later, Pojoaque police stopped Vialpando on U.S. Highway 84/285 and held him for Española and State police officers.