{"id":22037,"date":"2025-05-29T19:57:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T19:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-involved-in-police-shooting-identified-by-bpd\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:10:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:10:24","slug":"man-involved-in-police-shooting-identified-by-bpd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-involved-in-police-shooting-identified-by-bpd\/","title":{"rendered":"Man involved in police shooting identified by BPD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Bloomfield Police Department has identified the man, who was killed after shooting a Bloomfield Police officer during a routine traffic stop.<\/p>\n

Dennis Armenta, 58, reportedly shot officer Timothy Ontiveros about 10:55 p.m. May 26 in Bloomfield.<\/p>\n

Another officer on scene returned fire, killing Armenta, who has a criminal record, according to New Mexico courts.<\/p>\n

\"Dennis
Dennis Armenta, 58, was fatally shot by Bloomfield police after shooting officer Timothy Ontiveros during a routine traffic stop on May 26 in Bloomfield.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThe incident began when Mr. Armenta was stopped for a traffic violation but refused to roll down his window or provide identification to Ofc. Ontiveros,\u201d Bloomfield Police Chief Phillip Francisco said in a prepared news release.<\/p>\n

The officers negotiated with Armenta for more than eight minutes, but he reportedly refused to comply, the release states.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficers decided to arrest him for concealing his identity,\u201d Francisco stated, adding Armenta \u201cremained locked inside his car with the windows up, prompting officers to break a window to conduct the arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the window was broken, Armenta reportedly fired a handgun, striking Ontiveros and \u201cnarrowly missing\u201d the other officer, the release states.<\/p>\n

Ontiveros is in critical condition at UNM Hospital in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

\"A
A bullet hole in the police cruiser of Bloomfield Police Officer Timothy Ontiveros.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Armenta\u2019s criminal record dates back to 2013 when he was first arrested on a drunken driving charge. He had other charges of criminal trespass and resisting arrest from 2021 and 2024. He reportedly threatened hospital staff at San Juan Regional Medical Center in 2025 and was arrested and convicted in April 2023 on an aggravated assault with an ax at Presbyterian Medical Services in Farmington.<\/p>\n

The police-involved shooting is being investigated by the San Juan County Officer Involved Shooting Task Force led by the San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

officer remains in critical condition at UNM Hospital<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22037","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=22037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77556,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22037\/revisions\/77556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22037"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}