{"id":34009,"date":"2023-05-15T15:26:26","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T21:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/competency-questions-have-been-raised-for-man-accused-of-killing-his-mother\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:15:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:15:35","slug":"competency-questions-have-been-raised-for-man-accused-of-killing-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/competency-questions-have-been-raised-for-man-accused-of-killing-his-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"Competency questions have been raised for man accused of killing his mother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mateo
Mateo Yazzie was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Denise Werito. (Courtesy San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Competency has been raised in the case of a man accused of the April 5 killing of his mother.<\/p>\n

Mateo Yazzie, 23, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with the stabbing death of Denise Werito, of San Juan County. He was in court Thursday for a status hearing.<\/p>\n

Werito was reported missing April 5 by her family members after she abruptly hung up the phone on her mother, Susie Werito, about 9 a.m. that morning and failed to answer subsequent calls, according to the narrative from the San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Family members continued trying to contact Werito, calling her house and checking in at her workplace. The woman did not answer her phone and failed to show up for work at Aloha Salon. When family members drove by her home in the 400 block of County Road 390, they noticed her pickup truck was missing, and she did not answer the door to her house.<\/p>\n

Susie Werito became concerned because Denise admitted to her mother that Mateo Yazzie, her son, \u201cwas back to his old ways,\u201d after being released from jail.<\/p>\n

Court records show Yazzie\u2019s first charge was motor vehicle burglary in July 2018. Subsequently, Yazzie racked up eight charges tied to battering his mother. Of those charges, four were dismissed. One led to a conviction, and three resulted in no-contest pleas.<\/p>\n

Yazzie was given supervised probation for the convictions, one of which was violating a restraining order put in place by his mother, who also was weary of doing so.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the victim\u2019s concerns that when he (Yazzie) got out and was on probation, he would have nowhere to go,\u201d said Dustin O\u2019Brien, spokesman for the San Juan County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

At issue was no one in the family would \u201ctake him in because of the violence,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, adding that this to led Werito allowing Yazzie back into her home again and again. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t sure she wanted to get a restraining order, because he didn\u2019t have a place to go. She certainly let him move back in after there was a restraining order.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pattern of abuse perpetrated by Yazzie against his mother continued, according to charges recorded in the courts system.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times family members will flip-flop when it is an adult child to take care of,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

According to police records, Werito did tell her mother about Yazzie, telling Susie Werito, \u201cMateo had gotten back into drugs since he was released from jail a few months ago.\u201d This was why the family suspected \u201cfoul play,\u201d when Werito was not answering calls or coming to the door of her home when they knocked.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office entered the residence April 5 and found Werito dead. They continued their investigation, learning that Werito also \u201cthreatened\u201d his father, who lived in Farmington and whose name was redacted from the report.<\/p>\n

Yazzie was arrested April 6 and booked into the San Juan County Detention Center.<\/p>\n

His attorney brought up the issue of competency April 27, and this was at least the fourth time Yazzie\u2019s competency has been raised.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompetency had been raised at one point,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

Court records show, Yazzie was found competent on June 29, 2021, Dec. 8, 2021, and Dec. 23, 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting an accurate diagnosis has been a problem in New Mexico for a long time,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, adding the case against Yazzie will be dismissed, if he is found not competent to stand trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder April 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,799,28,131,443,2656],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-34009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-farmington","tag-headlines","tag-homicide","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico","tag-san-juan-county-sheriffs-office-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34009","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=34009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82439,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34009\/revisions\/82439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34009"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=34009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}