Cops confiscate truck linked to a murder

Andrea Egger
Staff Writer

GALLUP — A pickup truck associated with a homicide in New Orleans was confiscated by the McKinley County Sheriff's Department Friday evening.

Deputy Wayne Robertson reported that he was helping Navajo Police around 4 p.m. with a burglary that occurred in Standing Rock. He located a vehicle, driver and passenger suspected of having been involved in the burglary later that evening in Gamerco.

Robertson stopped the truck as the driver made the turn from U.S. 666 onto Chino Loop. Driver Emanuel Bahe, 20, of Summit Street in Gamerco, said he did not have registration on the vehicle, that it was his adopted brother's, Kenneth Crowl, 20, and that he had purchased the truck from a man in Taos, according to Robertson's report.

Bahe gave Robertson permission to search the truck. The deputy noted that the vehicle identification number had been removed from the door jam and that the truck had been red and was painted over in black.

After relaying the vehicle identification number to dispatchers, Robertson learned that the truck was wanted in association with a homicide in New Orleans. The deputy was instructed to place the truck on a police hold so it could be checked for latent fingerprints.

Robertson called for a wrecker. Bahe told him that Crowl was in jail. Robertson checked on this and learned that Crowl had been in the McKinley County Adult Detention Center but was later extradited to LaPlata County in Durango, Colo., on a "fugitive from justice" warrant.

The officer also learned that Crowl had been arrested on the warrant on March 3 at a home on Verdi Drive by Sheriff's Investigator Dee Dee Gonzales and Reserve Officer John Goins. Goins said he and Gonzales found Crowl and Bahe painting the truck that day.

Robertson had the truck towed to the sheriff's department, where evidence tape was placed on the doors and hood. The deputy locked a ring of keys into an evidence locker.

Officers called a detective at the New Orleans Police Department and told him the truck was secured at the sheriff's office's impound lot.