ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A stolen car was spotted for weeks around southwest Albuquerque until deputies were able to finally catch up to it. However, the convicted felon behind the wheel did not make it easy to send him back to jail.
It was a Tuesday night in late January when a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office deputy spotted a familiar red car. It was a stolen Dodge Challenger that he chased twice that month at one point traveling more than 130 miles per hour but both times the driver got away.
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This time, the deputies did not take any chances and tracked the car with the help of air support. The team followed the Challenger along southwest Albuquerque streets, taking out three of the tires with spike strips. Instead of stopping, the car started hauling and the driving turned dangerous.
After driving the wrong way down Coors for about a minute, the driver stopped and backed up as if to turn around and that was when deputies surrounded the car with a man and woman inside. It would be another six minutes before anyone was in custody.
The driver, deputies say, appears to be smoking meth while his companion was eating something in the passenger seat. Eventually, he did get out of the window as instructed and tried to run but didn’t get far. He and his passenger were taken into custody.
The driver, identified as 33-year-old Jude Shulte, has made headlines before. More than a decade ago he was acquitted of murder at a northeast Albuquerque apartment complex but was convicted of assault and other charges. In 2016, he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for trafficking meth.
Now, he’s facing a long list of new charges including fleeing police and drug trafficking after deputies found meth and fentanyl in the car. Investigators also connected him to a carjacking a month earlier outside a strip mall off 98th Street where they say he was seen in that same stolen challenger.
For now, Schulte will stay off the street after a judge agreed to keep him locked up pending trial. The woman with Schulte, Mercedez Moraga, was also arrested and charged with drug trafficking.
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