What started as a deputy checking on a couple drinking on the side of the road, turned into an arrest on outstanding warrants in McKinley County, and then charges of battery on a peace officer, for a Zuni woman.
Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Diaz charged Kristi Waatsa, 26, with a total of six counts on Aug. 21: four counts of battery on an officer and one count each of concealing identity and resisting an officer.
Diaz wrote in a criminal complaint that he was patrolling in Alcalde when he spotted a truck parked near a cemetery and park, both closed when he drove by at 11:26 p.m. Alcalde is a “high traffic area for burglars and auto thefts” so he stopped to investigate the truck.
A man and Waatsa were sitting on the tailgate and the man said they were just talking while Waatsa gave incoherent answers and slurred her words, he wrote.
“The female appeared underage of 21 and due to her being obviously intoxicated, I asked for both the male and female to identify themselves,” he wrote.
While the man handed over his driver’s license, the woman said she didn’t have any ID on her, then gave a name and “took a really long time” to say her date of birth. When he ran her info, it came back with no records and he asked for her real name, he wrote.
The man said he hadn’t been drinking and proved it by blowing into an interlock device attached to his car. The woman gave a second name and a different date of birth and then eventually her Social Security number. It was with the Social Security number that dispatchers were able to ID her, Diaz wrote.
After identifying her, they found she was wanted on two McKinley County warrants, one in district court and one in magistrate court, both with nationwide extradition. When he tried to arrest her, she allegedly kicked him twice in the legs and groin, he wrote. He then had another deputy get shackles, to keep her from kicking them again, and put a spit mask on her.
She was then taken to the Española Hospital to be cleared for jail, because of her level of intoxication. She was given a bottle of water but when Deputy Dennis Martinez tried to take it from her so he could handcuff her, she “became increasingly hostile and refused to give up the water bottle,” Diaz wrote. He told her she could keep it, but needed to let Martinez handcuff her.
“Kristi refused, and when Deputy Martinez went to take the water bottle, Kristi deliberately squeezed it in her hand, which splashed all of the water onto Deputy Martinez’s face,” Diaz wrote. “The water bottle was then snatched from her hands and she was handcuffed without further incident.”
When they got to Martinez’s patrol car, she refused to allow them to buckle her seatbelt and started swearing at them. At the Sheriff’s Office, she refused to get out and told officers to make her get out of the car. Walking her to the cell, she began yelling “racial slurs,” calling Diaz a “(expletive) white (expletive)” and “made comments about my skin complexion” and told Diaz to “‘wrap my arms around my own kind’ which I took offense to for racism,” Diaz wrote.
As he tried to put prisoner restraints on her, she allegedly spit on his hands, and then in his face a “few moments” later, he wrote.
She was ordered released on her own recognizance, with a requirement she report to pre-trial services, on Aug. 22.