Dec. 19—Two employees of a Santa Fe gas station face counts of kidnapping and other crimes after they were accused of attaching a chain to a homeless man sleeping outside the business Monday night and dragging him with a vehicle.
Police arrested Jonathan Gomez, 22, and Adrian Montoya, 31, at the Speedway at Agua Fría Street and Siler Road and booked them in the Santa Fe County jail early Tuesday morning.
Both men were charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit kidnapping and aggravated battery, according to criminal complaints filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
Montoya also faces counts of tampering with evidence and aggravated driving while intoxicated.
The man who had been dragged by a vehicle, who was about 50, according to the complaints, suffered road rash and was taken to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center for treatment.
One advocate for members of the homeless community decried the incident Tuesday but said it is rare to hear of such cases of violence against homeless people in Santa Fe.
Edward Archuleta, executive director of St. Elizabeth Shelter Corp., said, “I think people in Santa Fe are more caring than other cities when it comes to social issues.”
However, he added, “I’m really horrified to hear about something like this happening.”
Montoya declined to speak with police about the incident, the criminal complaints say.
Gomez was more forthcoming, telling Santa Fe police officers who responded to the incident he was working at the Speedway and had tried unsuccessfully to rouse the sleeping man. He ordered the man to leave the premises and called the nonemergency number for the local dispatch center several times seeking help, according to the criminal complaints. However, he said, workers who answered his calls repeatedly hung up on him.
He then called his manager, Montoya, who arrived in a Jeep.
Gomez told police it was Montoya’s idea to use the Jeep and a chain to drag the unresponsive man away from the gas station, the complaints state. Their goal, he said, was to get the man to a nearby car wash where he could sleep for the night.
According to his criminal complaint, Gomez said he started to walk away from Montoya and the homeless man because he didn’t think it was right to drag the man. But Gomez said he didn’t try to stop Montoya.
Instead, he created a video of the incident and posted it to his Instagram account, the complaint states.
Santa Fe County firefighters had pulled their firetruck into the Speedway as Montoya was driving the Jeep in reverse, dragging the man across the parking lot by his feet with a chain attached to the front the of vehicle, states the criminal complaint against Montoya.
They saw Gomez standing nearby, recording a video with his phone, according to the complaint.
Gomez told Santa Fe police the firefighters had advised him to delete the video, which he did. But an officer wrote in Gomez’s criminal complaint he was able to retrieve the video from the suspect’s Instagram account and review it.
The video showed Gomez’s face, the officer wrote, and then showed the man lying on the ground, with the chain attached to his feet and to the Jeep. Gomez can be heard in the video saying in expletive-laden language the pair had just dragged the sleeping man, the officer wrote.
Montoya declined to take a breath-alcohol test, his criminal complaint states, but an officer wrote in the document he smelled of alcohol and conducted field sobriety tests.
The tampering charge Montoya faces is because he is accused of trying to hide or alter the chain.
Police seized the phones of both suspects during their arrests.
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