{"id":13256,"date":"2026-02-25T05:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T12:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-man-61-suspected-of-bludgeoning-his-mother\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:36:24","slug":"farmington-man-61-suspected-of-bludgeoning-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmington-man-61-suspected-of-bludgeoning-his-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmington man, 61, suspected of bludgeoning his mother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=0f337711-b8f1-50f7-b1ca-17cebe68f586&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" alt=\"Brian Stover, 61, of Farmington, was arrested Feb. 24, 2026 and charged in the bludgeoning of his mother.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Brian Stover, 61, of Farmington, was arrested Feb. 24, 2026 and charged in the bludgeoning of his mother.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A Farmington man with a criminal history is facing a new charge after allegedly bludgeoning his mother.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Ray Stover, 61, was arrested and charged with third-degree felony aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.<\/p>\n<p>The charge stems from an early morning incident Feb. 23 that began as a missing person\u2019s report.<\/p>\n<p>Zachary Stover contacted Farmington police to report his father, Brian, as missing. This came after Zachary received a text at 6:50 a.m. reportedly saying \u201cI did something I didn\u2019t want to do. I was going to be suffocated. All my property is yours,\u201d according to the affidavit for an arrest warrant.<\/p>\n<p>Zachary went to his father\u2019s residence in the 1400 block of York Avenue and reportedly found his grandmother, Cecilia Stover, \u201clying in bed with an apparent injury to her head,\u201d the affidavit says.<\/p>\n<p>Cecilia \u201cwas covered in apparent dried and fresh blood,\u201d and a hammer with \u201capparent blood\u201d on it was found nearby, the affidavit says.<\/p>\n<p>Farmington police say in the affidavit that the woman was \u201cbludgeoned\u201d and suffered \u201ca fracture to her skull.\u201d She was flown to UNM Hospital \u201cfor more advanced surgery,\u201d the affidavit says.<\/p>\n<p>An arrest warrant was issued for Brian, who lives at the same address as his mother. He was booked into the San Juan County Detention Center at 12:26 a.m. Feb. 24.<\/p>\n<p>The San Juan County District Attorney\u2019s Office filed a motion for pretrial detention saying that Brian has a pending criminal case for aggravated battery of a household member and has prior convictions for child abuse and possession of a controlled substance.<\/p>\n<p>His previous child abuse conviction was \u201cintentional\u201d and \u201cviolent in nature,\u201d resulting in him breaking \u201cthe leg of a minor,\u201d according to the motion.<\/p>\n<p>Brian \u201ccontinues with his violent behavior and continues to put the community at risk,\u201d the motion says.<\/p>\n<p>The case has been assigned to 11th Judicial District Judge Curtis Gurley, and a detention and preliminary hearing has been set in Aztec District Court at 11 a.m. March 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Stover on aggravated battery charge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[585,168,799,28,138,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-assault-general","tag-crime","tag-farmington","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13256"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18886,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13256\/revisions\/18886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13256"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}