Jun. 7—A Mora County man has been found not guilty of causing the death of a friend who died in 2022 after the two were caught up in floodwaters in the wake of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

Jurors deliberated for five hours Wednesday following a three-day trial before acquitting John Vasquez, 32, of vehicular homicide DWI and leaving the scene of accident, in connection with the Aug. 7, 2022 death of 64-year-old Benjamin Torres, according to Vasquez’s attorney Ben Ortega.

Vasquez told New Mexico State Police he was driving Torres back to Guadalupita after they drank a few beers in Mora, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. While driving on N.M. 434, they encountered a flash flood.

According to the affidavit, Vasquez told police he saw a couple of vehicles go through the flooded area and thought he could make it, too.

When he tried to cross, Vasquez told police, the current turned his truck sideways and flooded the vehicle up to his and Torres’ knees, the affidavit says. Vasquez said he tried to put the vehicle in reverse but was unable to escape.

Vasquez got out before the truck flipped over and floated away, but Torres could not get out. His body was found inside the truck hours later.

“To his credit, John did not give up on his friend and risked his life by jumping into the floodwaters and bloodying his hands trying to break the window of the truck to save his friend,” Ortega said.

He didn’t give up, Ortega said, until a bystander ran up and told him to get out of the water before he too lost his life.

Though Vasquez told police he’d had a few beers beforehand, there was no formal drunken-driving investigation, Ortega said.

“Several other people had crossed before John did,” Ortega said. “He just made a mistake. … He wasn’t trying to do something wrong,” he added.

Ortega said he studied environment science in college and used knowledge he gained during those studies to help win the case.

A semitruck had entered the flow and parked upstream from the crossing, wanting to help stem the flow of water, Ortega said.

“But he actually made it worse,” because the blockage “made the water more energetic downstream,” Ortega said.

Ortega said he ran his theory by several of his professors, who told him he was on to something but that he would need an engineer to testify as an expert witness in order to make that argument. Unable to locate one in state, Ortega said, he convinced civil engineer Michael Jacobson to come from Baltimore to Las Vegas, N.M. for the trial.

“No one in New Mexico knows how to do these things [because] we don’t have a lot of water,” Ortega said. “Just like the state had a team form Ohio doing floodwater rescue [after the fires], I had to turn to Maryland to get help.”

Torres’ drowning was one of four that took place around the same time near the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon burn scar, where consistent and heavy rains had flooded rivers, creeks and roadways.