{"id":23919,"date":"2025-01-22T17:43:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T00:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hearing-set-in-dwi-case-of-san-juan-county-da\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:45:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:45:04","slug":"hearing-set-in-dwi-case-of-san-juan-county-da","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hearing-set-in-dwi-case-of-san-juan-county-da\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing set in DWI case of San Juan County DA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a8d5cc54-be50-53bd-8886-2724b1649902&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"640\" height=\"423\" alt=\"San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O'Brien has been arrested under suspicion of drunken driving after a Sept. 15 single vehicle crash.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">San Juan County Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O'Brien has been arrested under suspicion of drunken driving after a Sept. 15 single vehicle crash.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A pretrial hearing is set in the case of a San Juan County District Attorney charged with drunken driving.<\/p>\n<p>Chief Deputy District Attorney Dustin O\u2019Brien, 53, was charged with aggravated DWI and failure to give immediate notice of accidents in connection to a crash in the 900 block of Gladeview Drive. Both charges are petty misdemeanors. he was put on leave pending the investigation.<\/p>\n<p>The hearing is scheduled for Jan. 7, starting at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>Farmington police were called to the one-vehicle, hit-and-run crash about 1:26 p.m. Sept. 15, where they reportedly found a 2022 Dodge Ram 1500 with a camper shell crashed into a retaining wall, according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-block-embed-youtube naviga-video-embed\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KIoHlk0rcNM\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>According to the statement, there was \u201cheavy damage to the driver-side and passenger-side front bumpers,\u201d and the driver-side rear bumper was against the wall.<\/p>\n<p>The homeowner told police he had a Ring camera with video of the crash and the person reportedly driving the truck walking away from the scene, court records state.<\/p>\n<p>When police watched the video, they identified the alleged driver as O\u2019Brien and sent out an \u201cattempt to locate\u201d notice.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Brien was found 30 minutes later near the Speedway at the intersection of North Dustin Avenue and East 20th Street. He was described by police as having a \u201cslow, slurred speech and the odor of an intoxicating beverage on his person and exhaled breath,\u201d according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-block-embed-youtube naviga-video-embed\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_QbzPQSxOts\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>O\u2019Brien reportedly admitted to drinking one or two alcoholic beverages at 8 a.m. Sept. 15 and allegedly stated, \u201che felt he was safe to drive,\u201d court records state.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Brien reportedly declined a breath test and did not want to participate in a field sobriety test, but then submitted to a horizontal gaze test, a walk-and-turn test and a one-legged stand test, all of which \u201che failed\u201d and reportedly \u201cstruggled to maintain his balance,\u201d according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Brien allegedly stated he \u201cwas not \u2018feeling good\u2019 to drive,\u201d but refused medical attention, according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n<p>Police also wrote in the report that there were \u201ctwo 375ml bottles of Canadian Mist whiskey under the driver\u2019s seat,\u201d and one was empty, while the second had \u201chalf its contents consumed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The San Juan County District Attorney\u2019s Office assigned Taos District Attorney Marcus Montoya to handle the case. Montoya appointed Senior Trial Prosecutor Harvey Means to prosecute O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n<p>Sierra County Judge Thomas Pestak is hearing the case. Farmington attorney Mitchel Burns is representing O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Special prosecutor and Sierra County judge handling the case<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,28,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919","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=23919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78321,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23919\/revisions\/78321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23919"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}