{"id":23065,"date":"2025-03-19T06:46:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T12:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-county-sheriffs-office-investigates-rural-homicide\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:24:32","slug":"san-juan-county-sheriffs-office-investigates-rural-homicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-county-sheriffs-office-investigates-rural-homicide\/","title":{"rendered":"San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office investigates rural homicide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=5bca6051-0935-4365-8cfa-98f87e92e4a9&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1300\" height=\"887\" alt=\"Aztec San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office New Mexico.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Aztec San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office New Mexico.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office is investigating a homicide, but has withheld the details, including the victim\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<p>The homicide reportedly happened between 7:32 p.m. March 12 and 2:52 a.m. March 13.<\/p>\n<p>The<em id=\"emphasis-8fe177f1a71104c94ff8359880c928a8\"> Tri-City Record <\/em>requested the incident report and received a highly redacted narrative that does not include the location of where the body was found, the reporting party, or the identity victim, something that should be releasable under the law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is clear that the name of the deceased person should be public if the person is a suspected victim of homicide,\u201d said Amanda Lavin, legal director for the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. \u201cThe names of victims of crimes may be redacted only before charges are filed, and only for certain crimes. Homicide is not one of these crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Office report did state that the victim is a 45-year-old Native American female, who died \u201cbetween 7:32 p.m. March 12 and 2:52 a.m. March 13,\u201d according to the narrative.<\/p>\n<p>The victim reportedly was found around 7:30 p.m. March 13, \u201calong a dirt road,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n<p>The reporting party met the investigator \u201cat the intersection of NM 170 and NM 574,\u201d according to the narrative.<\/p>\n<p>The crime listed on the narrative is first-degree murder with the suspect \u201cunknown.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-pdf-embed\"><iframe class=\"article-pdf\" src=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/185h1K1ByEE5zKMingyoEvEvZQ0.pdf\" style=\"width:100%;height:500px;border:1px solid #ddd\" loading=\"lazy\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/185h1K1ByEE5zKMingyoEvEvZQ0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Homicide case redacted.pdf (Download PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"naviga-pdf-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dur-prod-public-pdfs.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/185h1K1ByEE5zKMingyoEvEvZQ0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Homicide case redacted.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Office claimed the reason for the redactions was \u201cconfidential, sources methods or information,\u201d which is allowed under the Inspection of Public Records Act, but Lavin said the department is using this as \u201ca sort of catchall exception to redact or withhold any information they think should be confidential.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some of this information \u201cisn\u2019t specifically exempted under IPRA, including information about ongoing investigations and victims of suspected homicide, which are both categories of information that are public and should not be removed from public records,\u201d Lavin said.<\/p>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Office records clerk noted that Detective C. Price \u201cis responsible for any denial or redaction\u201d and that this is an \u201cactive case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Lavin said the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in 2020, \u201cthat law enforcement records relating to an ongoing criminal investigation are not exempt from inspection under IPRA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the case of Jones v. City of Albuquerque Police Department, 2020-NMSC-013, \u00b6 37, \u201cthe court went on to reiterate, \u2018the exceptions to IPRA\u2019s mandate of disclosure are narrowly drawn,\u2019\u201d Lavin said.<\/p>\n<p>She added, \u201cthe Sheriff\u2019s Office appears to be using 14-2-1.2(A)(7) to redact anything and everything they want instead of only what is specifically allowed to be redacted under IPRA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The<em id=\"emphasis-95235449b6d25bb9eafac06243ad19ef\"> Tri-City Record<\/em> will provide more information when it becomes available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>redacted including victim\u2019s identity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10626,"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-23065","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\/23065","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=23065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77963,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23065\/revisions\/77963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23065"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}