Man arrested after using a gun to hit a city worker
A man who wanted a work crew to stop working Tuesday morning is accused of hitting one of the workers with the barrel of a gun in order to get him to turn off their truck.
Eric Mojarro, 31, was arrested at his home several hours later after a SWAT standoff. He is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and was booked into the county jail.
Shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday, a two-man crew from the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority was working on the sewer lines on Broadway and Trumbull SE, south of Avenida Cesar Chavez.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, Mojarro, who lives up the block, drove over to the crew and asked them what they were doing, and to turn off their truck. He said he “heard someone in the sewer lines.”
When a worker refused, he said Majarro pointed a gun at him and struck him in the face. One of the workers told police Majarro then “yelled in the manhole to see if anyone is in there.”
Water Authority spokesman David Morris said the crew told him they believed Majarro was upset about the noise they were making. He said the employee who was hit was not seriously injured, but was shaken up.
The workers called 911 and officers found Majarro driving around nearby, according to the complaint. They said when Majarro saw them, he pulled into his driveway, ran into his home and refused to come out.
The SWAT team was called to the scene and they took Majarro into custody around 2 p.m. Inside his house, they found ammunition and several other guns, many of which were in a safe, according to the return and inventory on a search warrant.