DWI offenders with 5 or more arrests
are chronic
(A complete list of persons convicted of DWI five or more times since
1984, see page 12 of this issue)
Zarana Sanghani
Staff Writer
GALLUP — Almost 900 people from McKinley County have been arrested
five or more times since 1984 for driving while intoxicated.
Driving while intoxicated is a misdemeanor offense the first three
times a person is convicted of the crime. The fourth and all subsequent
offenses are fourth-degree felonies.
People with five or more convictions are considered chronic drunk
drivers.
Of all New Mexico's counties, McKinley County has the second highest
number of people arrested five or more times for DWI. San Miguel County
in northeastern New Mexico ranked No. 1.
Topping McKinley County's record is Larry Scott, age 39, living in
Mentmore, with 15 arrests and 12 convictions.
Scott has a long police record including several assault and battery
charges and arrests for driving while his license was revoked for
earlier DWI offenses.
Paul Campos, the director of the McKinley County DWI Prevention Council,
has worked with DWI offenders for almost 10 years.
After hearing about the 900 people who had five or more DWI arrests,
Campos said, "Unfortunately, nothing really surprises me anymore,
because we've seen about as much pain and hurt and misery as you can."
Campos said he expects that fewer arrests and convictions were made
after 1993, because that year the state and city adopted stricter
punishments for DWI offenders, possibly deterring people from drinking
and driving.
"Prior to '93, the offense was the same whether you had 10 DWIs
or two," he said.
In 1993, law enforcers began charging people with fourth-degree felonies
when they had four or more DWI offenses. Jail time and fines also
increased for DWI.
Gallup is more strict than other cities, Campos said. Since 1993,
the city has required people convicted of DWI for the first time to
have to spend at least 72 hours in jail. (People with more than one
DWI conviction must attend the state magistrate court, not the city's
municipal court.) In other New Mexican cities and in Gallup before
1993, first-time offenders do not have to complete any minimum jail
time, Campos said.
Judges can revoke a person's license for up to a year for drinking
and driving. People convicted of DWI three or more times in 10 years
can loose their driver's license for 10 years. Licenses cannot be
permanently revoked.
For a list of people convicted of DWI five or more times since 1984,
see page 12.
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Correction
In Thursday's newspaper, the Rock Springs Veterans were incorrectly
identified as the Rock Island Veterans in the caption for the photos
titled "Playing for a good cause."
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Escaping from jail: The ultimate adrenaline
rush
Zarana Sanghani
Staff Writer
GALLUP — All of Gallup's orange and white lights were shining
up at the three men who were looking out at the town from on top of
the roof. The hills looked like gentle black waves all around them.
It was quiet, save for an occasional car that rumbled down Boardman.
Wearing nothing but white undershorts and sneakers, the three inmates
slipping out of the McKinley County Adult Detention Center on the
night of Oct. 4 knew it should have been cold, but they didn't feel
it too much.
What they felt was their hearts pounding.
Ba boom Ba boom
This was freedom. That's all that inmate Richard Martinez was thinking.
Martinez, 25, was in jail for burglary. In a recent interview, he
recalled that night.
"It was one of them nights when everything is just kicking. The
outside world doesn't know what's going on. Everyone was in their
houses thinking everything was cool.
"A little chaos in the quiet. It was a serene night, but for
us it was an adrenaline rush."
The jail building did not have many lights, so they felt their way
around the roof with their hands and used the light from the moon,
bright but not quite full that night.
Martinez found a pole on the south side of the jail's roof. The three
men had brought with them a rope made of bed sheets tied together.
With the rope secured to the pole, the inmates went down it one by
one.
They dropped from the roof onto the second level of the building,
onto the first level and finally to the ground. The first landing
was the hardest.
Facing the wall, with eyes closed, Martinez slid down the rope and
said a prayer.
Gerard Cantu
Gerard Cantu's pulse was threatening to tear the artery out of his
throat. At every beat, his blood vessel would leap.
Like Martinez, Cantu was scared of heights, and he closed his eyes
when it was his turn on the rope. They had to go down one at a time
because too much weight on the rope might break it.
The rope hung over the side of the wall, moving back and forth as
the men went down it.
Cantu, 30, was also in for burglary. He wasn't thinking so much about
freedom. His fears and excitement tangled with his imagination, and
he saw bleak images: jail guards catching him in the act, the constant
abrasion from the wall cutting through the rope, police shooting him
dead after chasing him down, his family watching the television news
report on his escape with horror and disappointment.
I don't want them to think bad about me, Cantu thought about his two
kids as he escaped.
"I was thinking about my family, because I knew they were going
to get mad," Cantu said in a recent interview. He worried about
his parents. "Cause I told them I was going to change when I
got out."
He got to the bottom of the rope, jumped a few feet to the ground,
and without saying a word, the three men ran east up the hill behind
the detention center.
The climb
Racing up the hill, the men uncoiled the energy that had been building
in them. In less than a minute, they were at the top.
Their pace had been fierce but painstaking and a welcome chance to
release tension. No one tripped, no one panted, no one sweated.
Though their thoughts and hearts had created a din in their minds
as they escaped, the night had been silent. They hadn't talked, their
sneakers only whispered thump, thump as they scaled the hill, and
the men couldn't even hear each other breathe.
In the car that was waiting on the top of the hill for them, they
let loose.
"In the car, we had a smoke, laughed about the escape,"
Martinez said, "and then I dropped them off."
A friend had left the car for them, but neither Cantu nor Martinez
would say who. The waiting car contained three pairs of clothes for
the men.
They drove off the hill into a little trailer park next to it and
disappeared into Gallup. The three went separate ways Cantu and Rodriguez
toward Phoenix, and Martinez to hide out in Gallup until he was ready
to go to Mexico.
The escape was complete in less than 10 minutes. The inmates had planned
and prepared for this for more than three weeks.
They had thought about and talked about freedom since they had been
incarcerated.
Calculating an escape
"Escaping had been on my mind for a while," Martinez said
in his interview. "About two or three weeks before we escaped,
I started looking around, and s-, not two or three feet from my cell,
I found a way out."
Martinez stayed in cell No. 13, the next room was cell No. 14, and
next door was the laundry room, the way out.
He pushed open the locked laundry room door with a bar he had ripped
out of a file cabinet and rigged the knob so he could open it from
the outside whenever he needed to.
Inside the laundry room, he found in the ceiling a large metal slab
locked with a padlock. He cut through the padlock with one of his
blades. Martinez had accrued a number of blades by sharpening handcuffs
and other metal objects he had swiped from distracted correctional
officers. He wasn't the only inmate with such a collection, he said.
On the other side of the slab was a small room, the size of a closet,
filled with pipes. In that ceiling was a vent guarded by crisscrossing
iron bars too thick for his homemade blades to cut.
When Martinez put his hands against the vent and felt air rushing
down, he knew the vent led to the outside. But bars still stood between
him and freedom.
Two days before the escape, Martinez found the accomplice
that would help him through the bars a hacksaw blade.
Martinez would not say how he got the blade.
But, as in all prisons across the nation, inmates can get what they
need including cigarettes and marijuana with the right contacts and
the right money.
(Some members of the law enforcement community suspect a jail guard
may have provided the hacksaw.)
It was brand new, about 5 inches long, with no handle. Martinez melted
the plastic handle of a toothbrush, molded it into a long, flat stick
and tied it to the blade.
Forging an exit
For five hours each day for two days, Martinez, with the help of other
inmates, sawed through the vent's grate.
While one man held a flashlight, Martinez bent backward, cutting through
the iron. The work left his neck and back sore, but it was worth it.
"Every time I went in there," Martinez said, "it was
a goose-bumpy, adrenaline-rush feeling."
Guards didn't notice he was gone while he was cutting the grate. Martinez
said he knew the guards did not check the cells frequently, so he
wasn't worried he said he knew the guards well enough to seldom worry
about them.
"That place is crazy. There was no security there," Martinez
said. "You know these people (guards) in jail. You know if an
officer is stupid."
At other jails Martinez has stayed in, he said, prison officers were
better trained and rotated often, so inmates rarely knew which guards
they could take advantage of.
Cantu said some jail guards would tell him they were undertrained
for their position.
"To tell you the truth," Cantu said, "they (guards)
were scared of everyone in there."
When the bars came down, Martinez crawled up the vent, pried open
the aluminum grate at the top and looked out.
Before the escape, he said, "I got on the roof and looked across
the street, and I could see my girlfriend's house. I breathed in the
air and I knew I'd escape."
The decision was not as easy for Cantu. A week prior to the escape,
he noticed, as did everyone else in his pod, H-pod, that Martinez
had found a way to the outside, but he did not know whether to take
that path.
The prison was going to release him in about a week. He kept telling
himself that escaping would be stupid. Cantu did not sleep for four
days before the escape.<cm+bd>Odd friends<cm-bd>A couple
of days before the escape, Gildardo Rodriguez, the third inmate who
escaped in October, and Cantu told Martinez they would be coming with
him. It was a strange grouping.
"I didn't trust Richard (Martinez)," Cantu said. "I
heard a lot of bad things about him. He told a lot of people stuff."
Cantu finally decided to go because he had promised Rodriguez that
he would help him once they were out.
"Sooner or later, I knew I was going to get caught. (I did it)
just to help my homeboy (Rodriguez)," Cantu said. "When
you're locked up with somebody, you know them pretty good, because
you're with him 24 hours a day."
If he had to choose again, Cantu said he would still escape with Rodriguez
to help him, but he would never try to escape again.
(Rodriguez, who is now in the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa
Fe, refused to talk about the escape.)
Martinez did not like Rodriguez.
"Most of the guys in here (jail) are like me they have sense
and care about things," Martinez said. "Then you got these
vatos (men) in here that don't care about s-. You got to stay away
from them.
"You got to figure this dude (Rodriguez) will kill you in a blink
of an eye. He's one of the guys you got to watch out for."
Rodriguez was in for murder; Martinez and Cantu were both in jail
for burglary. Martinez said he knew Rodriguez was violent, but he
did not know at the time of the escape that Rodriguez had killed.
If he had known, Martinez said, he might not have escaped with Rodriguez.
But Martinez may not have had that choice.
Martinez said Rodriguez controlled other inmates with violence. Martinez
said Rodriguez got into many fights, sometimes with Martinez's friends.
Wandering thoughts
When it came time to escape, though, the men stuck together. They
slipped out of their orange jumpsuits in the laundry room, crawled
up the warm vent, shuffled down the thick bed-sheet rope and drove
away from prison.
"I was just lost. I was shocked cause I did it," Cantu said
of his thoughts during the escape. Besides his worries, he noticed
little else. "I was in another world."
About his surroundings that night, Martinez said, "S-, I didn't
care, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
"I was thinking about Mexico. About how the f- I was going to
live down there. I was thinking, 'Am I just going to go into a life
of crime down there? Or am I going to be alive and have a decent job?'"
Cantu planned to take Rodriguez to Phoenix. Two days after the escape,
the two fugitives heard police sirens behind them as they drove down
a Phoenix road with a broken windshield.
Cantu said, "I knew that was it."
Return to prison
Cantu was driving, and when the police officer took Cantu into custody,
Rodriguez took off with the car. He would be caught in Phoenix two
months later.
From the police station, Cantu called his mother, who told him she
was happy he was safe and not breaking the law anymore.
Cantu's two days of freedom, "was still being locked up. We couldn't
go nowhere. Couldn't even go for a walk."
This was the first time Cantu had attempted to escape a prison. He
had been in two jails before. He lived in Denver, but was visiting
Gallup in May, when he was jailed for burglary.
Cantu is now incarcerated at the Las Lunas Correctional Facility,
where he will spend approximately one more year. The inmates there
have asked Cantu about his escape, but he doesn't like to talk about
it with them.
"It was kind of weird, cause I never did it before," Cantu
said of the escape. "I never did something so stupid. It's always
going to be on my thoughts."
This was Martinez's eighth escape attempt. Five times, Martinez successfully
broke out of the boy's school in Springer. Twice more, Martinez tried
but was stopped before he could clear the building.
So on the roof on the Oct. 4 night, Martinez was cool and calm, and
his escape companions looked to him like novices, moving like, "G.I.
Joe."
Martinez stayed out four days longer than Cantu. He had driven to
his friend's house in Gallup and hid in the garage until police found
him there.
He has a year and a half to do in Lea County Correctional Facility,
in Hobbs, but he has no regrets. At 26, Martinez said, he is still
young, hopeful and allowed to make mistakes.
"I never made it out of the garage, which is a good thing,"
Martinez said. "I think God blessed me cause I got two boys and
it's a good that I wait this out."
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Gallup's rowdiest nightspots
Tanya Brazil
Staff Writer
GALLUP — No one knows the nightlife of Gallup better than Joe
Garcia.
Patrolling bars and motels in a public custody van, Garcia's job is
to pick up intoxicated people and take them to the Na'Nizhoozhi Center
detox program.
A recent Friday night ride-along with the Gallup public safety officer
showed the bulk of the city's alcohol problem exists around the Esquire
bar and the neighboring motels on East Route 66.
Police responded to 240 calls at Esquire Liquors and Lounge in the
past year, with 25 of those calls involving fights and assaults, as
well as one stabbing.
These calls do not include the ones to nearby motels, which are notorious
for parties and fights after the bars close, Garcia said. Police receive
more calls to motels than to bars, he said.
A couple leaving the Esquire on foot are questioned the woman is obviously
intoxicated and is being steadied by her male companion. But when
her drinking buddy produces a motel key, Garcia lets them go because
they have a safe place to stay.
Garcia, who often gives locals a ride home if they are too drunk to
drive, says he stops to check people he sees staggering or loitering.
Waiving to a grungy man walking along Historic 66, Garcia says the
suspicious-looking guy is a friend who does mechanical work. He says
people cannot be judged on appearance alone, that some Navajos are
dirty after a hard day's work but live too far outside the city limits
to go home and get cleaned up before going out.
"It doesn't mean they're intoxicated," he says.
When Garcia started this job in the early 1980s, Gallup had two or
three other bars, and the streets were crowded with drunks, he says.
The Esquire did not have as many problems as it does now until a downtown
bar called Commercial on Fourth Street closed, he adds.
With Gallup being a reservation border town, Native Americans traded
in the downtown area, Garcia says. While wives shopped, their husbands
drank at the bars, he adds, and large numbers of drunks wandered the
downtown streets.
Back then, he says, on a Friday night the public custody van would
pick up a load of drunks at Commercial, drop them off at NCI and then
go back for another load. Garcia says he cannot single out one bar
as the problem today. Since the downtown bars closed, he adds, the
drinkers have scattered.
Tonight, Garcia cruises by places frequented by the homeless as well,
such as The King's Place on Historic 66, which feeds the hungry in
a Gallup version of a soup kitchen, and Casa San Martin, a night shelter
on Wilson Avenue. He also checks motels on East Route 66, as well
as abandoned motels such as the Log Cabin Lodge.
Just after midnight, Garcia spots a man passed out on top of a pile
of clothes outside Casa San Martin. Next to him, an empty bottle of
Garden Deluxe. Another bottle lies shattered in the street.
Speaking in Navajo, the officer orders the inebriated man to get up
and climb into the back of the van. As he drives away with his first
passenger of the night, the smell of alcohol slowly fills the van.
Garcia's job is not glamorous by any means. He says the van smells
particularly bad in the summertime, when the stench of vomit, urine
and excrement festers in the heat.
Minutes later, the public custody van responds to a call concerning
someone hit with a bottle at the Sports Page bar at the old Trademart
Square. As Garcia approaches the police-saturated area, a young female
is taken away in handcuffs. One of the owners of the establishment
becomes upset when she sees a photographer and orders the Independent
staff off the premises.
Garcia picks up other drunks throughout town, including a man at the
Gallup Indian Medical Center who has fallen onto broken glass on the
ground while trying to dislodge a truck stuck in the mud. Another
intoxicated man has urinated all over himself and is picked up at
Allsup's on West Route 66.
NCI detox employees seem to know the clients dropped off there, calling
them by their first names as they help them out of the van. Garcia
says he consistently picks up the same people.
Garcia is dispatched next to the American Bar. As he nears the bar,
a man walking down Coal Avenue waives him down. The man had called
police, simply wanting a ride home. But he changes his mind when told
he will have to ride around for a while. It is, after all, almost
closing time.
Since the Commercial closed, Garcia says, the American Bar has calmed
down and is busier during the afternoon and early evening hours. But
bartenders have told Garcia the same people drink there every day,
all day, and he wonders where they get the money to do that.
At about 1:30 a.m., Garcia is called to the Esquire because three
people have been fighting in front of the bar. By the time the public
custody van and police arrive, the suspects are in front of the Redwood
Lodge.
With nightstick in hand, Garcia jumps out of the van and inquires,
"Hey, where are you going?" A male carrying a duffel bag
and two females say they have a motel room but cannot produce the
key.
Garcia says the public custody van receives most of its calls about
the time the bars close, so next he makes his way to the Cowboy Saloon.
But a check of the Cowboy shows the atmosphere to be restrained, except
for a lone man who approaches the van, needing a place to stay and
asking for a ride to NCI.
After the Class Act closes, Garcia says, the patrons usually continue
their drinking at the Cowboy Saloon, increasing its activity.
Garcia says the public custody vans generally do not patrol the Class
Ac, since they have their own security and call if they need a drunk
picked up.
The night ends with Garcia having to quell a disturbance in his van,
when two of the occupants he had just picked up get into a scuffle.
He hears one of the men exclaim, "Get off me, Cowboy," and
as they struggle, one of the women in the van eggs them on.
Garcia has been planning to patrol the motel area of town a little
more, but the fight forces him to transport his passengers to NCI.
Another night on Gallup's wild streets is over.
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Dead sheep being investigated
WATERFLOW, N.M. (AP) — R.J. Hunt believes the water from Shumway
Arroyo through his property is killing his sheep.
He blames discharges into the arroyo by Public Service Company of
New Mexico's San Juan Generating Station, and now the state Environment
Department is taking a look to see if he's right.
Hunt has lost about 1,200 head of sheep, along with goats and other
animals, since October 1998...
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Prewitt woman arrested for disorderly
conduct
Mary E. Davis
Staff Writer
GRANTS — Bonnie Edsitty, 20, of Prewitt made a phone call to
911, asking for a ride. Her mother also offered her a ride home. But
Edsitty ended up at the Cibola County Detention Center after being
arrested by a village of Milan police officer who spotted her walking
on Highway 66.
The officer arrested Edsitty on March 20 for disorderly conduct and
resisting arrest after an attempt to get her into her mother's vehicle
failed.
Edsitty reportedly began her search for a ride to the Green Valley
Trailer Park around 10:44 p.m. when she dialed 911 from Loves Country
Store. But the woman apparently left the store before an officer arrived.
Loves employees told the officer the woman appeared to be intoxicated
and was reportedly bleeding from her face, according to the officer's
report...
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Lawsuit considered after fatal chase
Bill Donovan
Staff Writer
GALLUP — A Ramah attorney is considering filing a lawsuit in
federal court questioning whether the Gallup police acted properly
in the March 12 high-speed chase that left three Navajo, N.M., family
members dead.
"I believe that the Gallup Police Department is at least partially
at fault for the accident and subsequent fatalities and injuries,"
said William G. Stripp.
Stripp is representing Amanda Hausner and her infant son, both of
whom were injured when a suspected drunk driver, Johnny Caballero,
30, slammed into a pickup driven by Ray Hobb, 36. Hobb, his wife Christine
and 8-month-old baby Shasawn were killed in the crash...
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Milan pool re-opens after major repairs
Tom Purdom
Staff Writer
MILAN — One of the most popular swimming spots here is open to
all aqua-fans again after undergoing a month-long corrective surgery
for water damage.
The Milan Municipal Swimming Pool has been open on a limited basis
since construction work began Feb. 19 to repair severe water damage
to aluminum nonsupporting I-beams in the walls of the locker areas.
"The kids still used the pool while we were working," Steve
Maxwell, pool director, said. "While we were working on one locker
room, we'd run the boys through the other first, then the girls..."
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Sheep Springs man dies in car accident
Jim Maniaci
Diné' Bureau
SHEEP SPRINGS — A 31-year-old local man died Thursday afternoon
in a two-car crash that Navajo police say was caused by alcohol.
Shawn Coleman died in his Ford Escort at mile post 47 on U.S. 666
about 4:30 p.m. when he tried to cross the highway from the east side
A southbound car, driven by Richard Ward, 54, of Bountiful, Utah,
could not avoid the collision despite swerving as far to the right
as possible, police said...
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Deaths
Johnny Grenko Sr.
GALLUP — Services for Johnny Grenko Sr., 74, will be held at
10 a.m., Monday, March 27 at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. Father Pat
Universal will officiate. Burial will follow at the Sunset Memorial
Park.
Vistiation will be held from 5-7 p.m., Sunday, March 26 at Rollie
Mortuary.
Grenko Sr. died March 20 in Gallup. He was born May 16, 1925 in Allison.
Grenko Sr. was a member of the Sacred Heart Cathedral and Croation
Lodge. He was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars serving with
the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Survivors include his son, John F. Grenko of Gallup; daughters, Evelyn
Gatsiopoulous of Greely, Colo. and Cynthia Howell of Evergreen, Colo.;
and a sister, Jennie Vitullo of Pueblo, Colo.
Grenko Sr. was preceded in death by his wife, Dolores Grenko; parents,
Tony Grenko and Jovana Grenko; brothers, Joe Grenko and Phil Grenko;
and a sister, Diane Meyers.
Pallbearers will be Leonard Fellin, Buster Gonzales, Manuel Gonzales,
Frank Martinelli, John Mraz and Frankie Joe Mraz.
Rollie Mortuary is in charge of arrangements.
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