Ferguson dodged cops before Jeremiah’s death
Arrest order, warrant not entered into crime database
Thomas Ferguson made a habit of dodging law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
He was able to slip away just days before he allegedly had a role in the killing of 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia last November, though he was a wanted man at the time and had an in-person encounter with officers.
Santa Fe police officers let Ferguson drive away, even after he was found to have an expired driver’s license, a recently released police video shows.
Officers couldn’t find any other reason to hold Ferguson, because, according to a state Corrections Department spokesman, a months-old arrest order for Ferguson on a probation violation had never been entered into a nationwide crime database.
A court-approved arrest warrant also existed at that time, but it may not have made its way into the SFPD records system in time.
The police video was taken as officers arrested Tracy Ann Pena, Jeremiah’s mother and Ferguson’s girlfriend, in a Walmart parking lot for failing to make a required court appearance. Ferguson met with officers in the parking lot so he could retrieve Pena’s personal items.
During that incident, a Santa Fe officer wrote in his police report that Pena, a frequent flier at the local jail, had no children to care for at home, even though she can be heard on the video mentioning her daughter and asking Ferguson to
tell the girl she’s sorry.
SFPD policy requires officers to ask arrestees about children and whether they will be at home without an adult caretaker. If children are placed with anyone other than another parent, officers are supposed to check with the state Children, Youth and Families Department for any record of child abuse.
Ferguson had been charged with child abuse, but not convicted.
Two days after Pena was arrested and Ferguson was allowed to leave the Walmart parking lot, young Jeremiah was killed at the family group’s Nambé home, where he had been routinely tortured with implements, such as a homemade spear and a hammer, and was kept in a dog kennel while wearing diapers, according to investigators. Court documents say Jeremiah was beaten senseless and stuck in the kennel before he died.
Ferguson, who was 42, faced several charges in the boy’s death, but he committed suicide in the Santa Fe County jail in April.
Pena, 36, also faces several charges, including child abuse resulting in death, conspiracy and tampering with evidence, in Jeremiah’s killing, even though she was not at the home at the time of his death.
Ferguson’s 20-year-old son, Jordan Nunez, faces similar charges.
On Nov. 24, SFPD officer Jacob J. Martinez arrested Pena after seeing her in the Walmart parking lot. He knew she had a Santa Fe Municipal Court warrant for failure to appear, according to Martinez’s lapel video from the arrest.
Pena later told Santa Fe County deputies that when she got out of jail and returned to the Nambé home on Nov. 26, she went into Jeremiah’s room and found him lifeless on his bed.
She said Ferguson forced her and Nunez to stuff the body into a plastic storage container and bury it in a shallow grave off N.M. 503 near Nambé.
Deputies learned about Jeremiah’s death in late January after Pena told another inmate about it in the Santa Fe County jail, where she was being held again on other charges.
Investigators initially pegged Ferguson as the murderer, but new court documents accuse Nunez of delivering the fatal blow to Jeremiah as the boy was locked in the dog crate.
Ferguson was on probation the day of the encounter with police in the Walmart parking lot after pleading guilty to charges stemming from a 2014 case in which he was accused of keeping a woman in his home for several days while beating and sexually assaulting her. But he had stopped reporting to
his probation officer in Las Vegas, N.M., in June 2017.
Probation and Parole filed an arrest order — a measure that constitutes notice to law enforcement that someone is a probation absconder — for Ferguson in July last year.
The state Probation and Parole division also filed probation violation reports in Santa Fe District Court, first in August 2017 and again in November. The Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office filed a belated motion to revoke Ferguson’s probation on Nov. 20.
It was four days later that Ferguson interacted with police when they stopped his girlfriend Pena at the Walmart.
Ferguson may have gotten a break because the arrest warrant was issued during a holiday week. Nov. 24 was Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and the court-approved warrant from Nov. 20 may not have been put into the SFPD system because of holiday closures.
But the officers still could have determined Ferguson was wanted under the Probation and Parole order from July 2017. That order should have been in the National Crime Information Center database for law enforcement.
But Corrections Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said the order never made it into the database. Mahesh maintains that’s not Corrections’ fault.
“We did issue an arrest order on Ferguson in July, however at the time, SF Dispatch’s policy was not to enter our arrest orders in NCIC,” Mahesh said in an email. “Our division has worked with SF County Dispatch and they agreed to start entering our arrest orders into NCIC.”
Santa Fe County Regional Emergency Communications Center Director Ken Martinez could not be reached for comment earlier this week.
When officer Martinez arrested Pena on Nov. 24, he and officer Heinz De Luca met with Ferguson in the Walmart parking lot to give him Pena’s personal items. Martinez then gets Ferguson’s expired driver’s license, returns to his patrol car and runs a warrant check on him, but the person on the other end of the radio doesn’t find a warrant for Ferguson.
But his license is expired. Martinez tells him it’s OK to drive straight home, but to be sure he gets it taken care of.
Pena asks to speak with Ferguson and mentions her daughter.
“Can I talk to him, please, because my daughter’s going to freak out,” Pena says to officer Martinez. Just before Martinez drives away with Pena, Pena tells Ferguson to give a message to the daughter.
“Tell Bug I’m sorry,” Pena says. “Bug” is what the family group called the girl, according to court documents.
There is no mention in the video of Jeremiah, believed to have been alive at that point. Neither child was enrolled in school at that time.
Even though Pena does mention her daughter, Martinez wrote in his report that “Ms. Pena was not caring for any children or dependants (sic) at the time of the arrest.”
SFPD policy requires officers making arrests to inquire whether the suspect is caring for any children, and if the answer is yes to attempt to locate an adult relative to care for the child.
The policy says a criminal background check of an alternative caregiver should be conducted. Ferguson was previously charged with both child abuse and criminal sexual penetration in separate incidents, but was never convicted of those crimes.
The SFPD policy also says the officer should check with the state Children, Youth and Families Department “for information on any child abuse or neglect history of the potential caregiver.”
SFPD spokesman Greg Gurule said the department became aware of the lapel video’s content after it was recently requested by the Journal and is now investigating whether any policies were violated. Martinez and De Luca will remain on regular duty as the investigation is carried out, Gurule said.
“The officers will not be placed on leave or alternate duty at this time,” Gurule said in an email. “With the initiation of an administrative investigation, this becomes a personnel matter and no additional information can be provided at this time.”
This incident was the last of a handful of instances where court personnel or officers missed opportunities to put Ferguson behind bars prior to Jeremiah’s death.