A homeless woman, once reported missing from North Carolina, is wanted on a warrant out of Mora County, after she was released from the Rio Arriba County Detention Center and local charges against her were dismissed by prosecutors.
New Mexico State police Officer Julio Orona sought an arrest warrant for Kelsey Pittman, 34, on Oct. 24, charging her with two counts of aggravated battery and one count each of unlawful taking a vehicle, breaking and entering and unauthorized graffiti, after she allegedly attacked two cleaners at a rest stop off of Interstate 25 on Oct. 10, just a day before she was arrested by Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s deputies.
The Arrest
Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Martinez charged Pittman on Oct. 11 with aggravated assault on an officer, shoplifting and resisting arrest after he was called to the Family Dollar in Abiquiú, where Pittman was reported to be throwing things and being belligerent with employees, Martinez wrote in a criminal complaint for her arrest.
He found her behind the family dollar, behind a bush. He pointed his stun gun at her and told her to put her hands up, to which she repeatedly responded, “Let me see your badge.” When Martinez “arced” his stun gun, showing it was on, Pittman stood up and he saw a “shiny object” in her hand and she went to the opposite side of the bush and took a step. Martinez worried she was going to charge him, backed up and told her again to get down, he wrote.
“Kelsey began to start running away from me heading back towards the store,” he wrote. “I advised over the radio I was in a foot pursuit. Kelsey then began running northwest away from the store.”
After he told her he would shoot her with the stun gun, she got on the ground and he handcuffed her, he wrote.
“Kelsey said, ‘If you’re a good cop, I’m sorry, I thought you were working with the cops on the navigator app,’” Martinez wrote. “She then said ‘you’re cops, you’re not trying to send me to the black web.’”
She told Martinez she had a pocket knife on her, the shiny object he saw earlier, and she told him that she thought he was trying to sell her on the “black web” and that girls are sold on the “navigator” app, he wrote.
She told deputies as they walked her back to the store that the clerk wouldn’t let her buy anything, and that “they cleaned out their entire cell phone section when I was trying to buy a cell phone, cause they followed me here, I swear to god dude, I try, I have money. You can check my pocket, I have cash. She would not let me pay for my stuff,” Martinez wrote.
She told them she was trying to get to Arizona and that the day prior, a man hit her on the head. When they searched her, they found she was wearing clothing taken from the store, the deputy wrote.
Watching the footage from surveillance cameras, Martinez saw Pittman allegedly kick the back door of the store open and walk out with her arms full of stuff.
Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Alexandra Naranjo set her bail on Oct. 14 at $500, which she couldn’t post. Prosecutor Kent Wahlquist dismissed the case on Oct. 16 and she was released from jail.
The Incident
The day before, Oct. 10, Orona was sent to the I-25 rest stop. Tommy Armijo told him he went to one of the “decommissioned” bathrooms to get some tools and when he opened the door, he saw a woman inside, sleeping. The woman “became irate and aggressive” toward him and the two started to argue and she allegedly threw bleach in his face. He locked the bathroom door and she climbed out the window, Orona wrote.
The woman, later identified as Pittman, ran toward the other restrooms where Frances Armijo had left her 2022 Toyota Tacoma running. As she tried to get to the truck, the Armijos tried to stop her and she pulled out a “large hunting knife” and slashed at them, damaging Tommy Armijo’s jacket and “severely” cutting Francis Armijo’s forearm. She was later found to have a possible broken wrist as well, he wrote.
Pittman was allegedly able to get into the truck and drive away. Inside the non-functioning bathroom, officers found jugs of urine, two journals and walls “defaced with cryptic messages that appeared to be recently written, some including social media handles of Kelsey Megan Pittman,” Orona wrote.
Orona found out that Pittman was then arrested by Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s deputies and another State Police officer in Rio Arriba County questioned her, following her initial arrest in Abiquiú, about the I-25 rest stop incident, where she alleged Tommy Armijo attacked her with a weedwhacker and she fought back with a box cutter, he wrote.
He wrote that Pittman is originally from North Carolina, where she was reported missing, and was located in Denver, Colorado, by law enforcement.
According to media reports from July, including from People Magazine, she was found in Colorado eight months after disappearing from North Carolina, and she had last spoken to her family in November 2024, when she was in Death Valley National Park in California. There, they found her abandoned car, but couldn’t find her, and her disappearance was covered by USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and CBS News.
It wasn’t until Oct. 24, long after Rio Arriba County prosecutors dismissed the charges, that the Mora County charges were approved and the arrest warrant signed.
Pittman is wanted on a nationwide arrest warrant charging her with two counts of aggravated battery and one count each of unlawful taking a vehicle, breaking and entering and unauthorized graffiti.
“Kelsey’s whereabouts are unknown at this time,” Orona wrote. “Due to Kelsey being homeless, and known to move from state to state, I humbly request the arrest warrant be granted nationwide.”