Agencies still silent on fatal police shooting that left officer wounded

May 20—More than two months after a Santa Fe officer was injured by a gunshot and attacked by a police service dog when an arrest operation turned chaotic, neither city nor state police have said who fired the shot that struck Officer Charles Ovalle.

The state Department of Public Safety recently released a 258-page case file on the ongoing New Mexico State Police investigation into the March 10 incident, which also left two men wounded by Santa Fe police gunfire — one of them fatally. The trove of documents, photographs and videos, which came in response to a public records request, offers new details about the incident but doesn't say who shot Ovalle.

Evidence in the file suggests a strong possibility of crossfire between Ovalle and two other officers who fired their weapons that day: Luis Ruiz and Manuel Romero. However, none of the records confirm Ovalle was hit by friendly fire.

The Department of Public Safety withheld recordings and reports of interviews with Ovalle, Ruiz and Romero. It's unclear why that information was withheld. Records staff at the agency did not respond to questions.

Santa Fe police had been trying to arrest Rick Robert Chavez, 35, on several outstanding warrants accusing him of aggravated assault on a police officer, aggravated fleeing, burglary, auto theft and other crimes. He led officers on a chase in a midtown neighborhood the morning of March 10. The dangerous pursuit ended on Vereda de Encanto — where police say Chavez attempted to get into the car of a suspected getaway driver.

Ovalle, Ruiz and Romero began firing at Chavez and George Theragood Jr., 42, who was sitting in the driver's seat of a car outside his home. Both were struck by bullets, and Chavez died in a hospital two days later.

While Chavez was holding a gun, according to police reports, there is no indication he pointed or fired the weapon. Police have not said Theragood was armed.

Theragood, who was treated for a gunshot to the arm, was jailed on several felony charges after the incident but denies he had any intention of aiding Chavez in an escape and insists he committed no crime before he was struck by police gunfire.

Records missing, officials mum

Reports indicate Ovalle was hit by a bullet that wounded his arm and became lodged in his bulletproof vest. At nearly the same time as the gunshots, Officer Alexandro Arroyo released a police dog named Ayke to help apprehend Chavez. Instead of pursuing Chavez, however, Ayke ran to Ovalle and bit the officer's right arm above his gunshot wound.

The bullet recovered from Ovalle's vest was entered as evidence after the incident, reports state, but the Department of Public Safety did not provide any records of evidence testing that might show whose gun fired the bullet.

State police spokesmen did not respond to questions about the probe into the projectile.

The Department of Public Safety provided videos of interviews with seven Santa Fe officers who were at the scene — and one who was not — but did not hand over any recordings of interviews with Ovalle, Ruiz or Romero.

Requests for public records — Santa Fe police body camera video and communications regarding the incident — have been pending with the city of Santa Fe since March 11. City records staff sent a message saying the records would be provided by May 10 but failed to provide them by that date. Records staff did not respond to a more recent inquiry.

The Santa Fe Police Department has declined to answer any questions about the shooting, referring inquiries to state police and citing the ongoing investigation. An internal administrative investigation into the shooting will begin after New Mexico State Police has finished its investigation, Deputy Chief Ben Valdez wrote in an email.

Interviews and reports from the seven officers at the scene indicate Ruiz and Romero fired from one direction and Ovalle was standing across from them.

A state police officer's body camera video shows the same: As he arrives at the scene immediately after the shooting — while tensions appeared to be escalated — he says to officers surrounding one side of Theragood's vehicle, "Crossfire as [expletive], you guys."

Several officers at the scene said in reports and interviews they had seen the police dog attack Ovalle but didn't know he also had been hit by gunfire until they saw him on the ground, bleeding profusely.

Wrong place, wrong time?

Santa Fe police have called Theragood a suspect in the incident, and he faces felony counts of aiding a felon and disarming a police officer and a misdemeanor count of resisting an officer. After he was shot, reports say, Theragood struggled against police as they detained him, and he tried to take control of an officer's "less lethal" beanbag launcher.

Theragood was booked in the Santa Fe County jail but later was released. A state District Court judge rejected prosecutors' request to keep him jailed until his trial.

His defense attorney, Michael Jones, said in a recent interview he will be exploring whether police "overcharged" his client because they had shot him.

"It calls into question whether the police overreacted in this situation," Jones said. "Their theory that there was this grand conspiracy between Theragood and Chavez just doesn't make sense. It's our job to disprove that, and I think we will."

Theragood and his wife, April Jaramillo, were both detained and questioned — and both insisted he was a man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hours after Theragood was treated at a local hospital for his gunshot wound, a Santa Fe police officer sat down to interview him, slaying, "I believe there are multiple sides to every story."

The officer asks Theragood if he wonders why he is there.

"Yeah, I'm wondering," Theragood says in the video. "I'm wondering why I got shot, too. ... All I want to know is, why am I in handcuffs?"

Throughout the half-hour interview, Theragood intermittently winces in pain, grabbing at his bandaged arm.

He tells the officer he was pulling away from his home to pick up breakfast for his family that morning when Chavez called him and, moments later, drove up next to his Lexus in an SUV with four flat tires. The vehicle was pulling an orange tractor on a trailer, and police were in tow, he says. Chavez got out of the SUV and walked to Theragood's Lexus — amid police gunfire — and said, "I'm sorry. I love you, bro," Theragood tells police.

"It's a pretty big coincidence," the officer says. He tells Theragood police suspected he was aiding Chavez in making an escape, "and you happen to be outside, with the car running ... what are the odds of that?"

"I didn't help him," Theragood says. "I [expletive] stopped the car, put my hands up and I [expletive] stepped out of the car."

A state police officer also questions Theragood, asking if he saw Chavez or anyone besides police aim or fire a gun during the incident. Theragood says no.

Hours earlier, officers questioned Jaramillo outside the couple's home, next to ribbons of crime scene tape surrounding a stretch of Vereda de Encanto.

Officers ask Jaramillo multiple times if Chavez had called her husband before Theragood left the house that morning, if Theragood had answered any calls or texts or if Chavez had been at their house recently. She says no. Theragood walked outside to move his car so their son could go to work, she tells police.

She went outside and saw police surrounding the Lexus — her car, she says — and then saw them shooting at it, with her husband inside. She yelled at the officers and told her son and daughter to begin recording video of the incident, she tells police in the interview, and then officers "slammed" her son to the ground and handcuffed him.

Police asked Jaramillo if she heard the gunshots.

"Yeah, I heard the gunshots," Jaramillo says. "I started yelling because my husband just got in the car, and there's no reason they should be shooting at him."