Man charged with vehicular homicide in crash
Suspect’s record: Trail of DWI arrests, including back-to-back
An Albuquerque man’s fifth drunken driving arrest turned into a vehicular homicide charge after police say he killed one driver and injured another in a North Valley crash Friday afternoon.
Kyle Crespin, 32, is charged with vehicular homicide in the three-vehicle crash that left 40-year-old Michael Chmura dead. Crespin was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Saturday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
Rebecca Atkins, an Albuquerque police spokeswoman, said the investigation into the crash is ongoing.
“At this time it does appear that alcohol, drugs and speed were contributing factors for this crash,” she said.
Crespin is currently set for a jury trial on DWI charges from a March arrest and is on probation in a 2019 case in which he threatened a man with a gun.
Court records show Crespin has been arrested a total of four times for DWI since 2015, with one of the cases dismissed. Two of the arrests, including Friday’s, occurred while he awaited trial in a previous DWI case.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court:
Police responded to a three-vehicle crash at Fourth and Candelaria NW around 3:30 p.m. Friday. Crespin was standing on the sidewalk near the wreck and Chmura was dead inside a T-boned truck. A person in a third vehicle, who crashed into the other two vehicles, was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Witnesses told police Crespin was driving a Ford F350 truck “erratically” south on Fourth when Chmura pulled his truck out of a parking lot and was T-boned by Crespin.
Crespin told police he was headed to meet his mother and had the truck in cruise control set to 45 mph when he crashed. Police said Crespin’s speech was slurred but he denied drinking or
taking any drugs.
After performing poorly on a sobriety test, Crespin told police he had taken Xanax “two or three days ago.” Officers had Crespin’s blood drawn for evidence and he was arrested.
Crespin has had four previous DWI arrests, according to court records.
In 2015, Crespin was arrested after a witness told police they saw a man in a pink shirt crash a car and flee the scene in the North Valley. Police discovered the car belonged to Crespin and found him at his home, in similar clothing, out of breath and sweating profusely.
Police said Crespin, who was described as having slurred speech and smelling of alcohol, denied being in the crash and said his car had been stolen from a nearby brewery while he was having beers. Crespin told police the car was reported stolen but police said it hadn’t been.
The case was later dropped after defense attorneys won a motion to suppress the witness testimony of seeing Crespin leave the scene.
In 2017, Crespin was arrested twice in a three-month span by New Mexico State Police, both times on charges of driving drunk with open beer bottles and cans in the vehicle.
The second arrest happened as he awaited trial in the first.
He eventually pleaded guilty to two counts of DWI and was sentenced to probation.
Subsequently, in February 2020, Crespin was sentenced to three years probation after pleading no contest to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a case where he threatened a man with a gun in front of the man’s family outside a hospital.
He went on to violate probation twice this year in connection with that case — the first time in March, when arrested for DWI in Rio Rancho, and then in May, when he was found to be drunk while trying to get gas for his vehicle in Truth or Consequences.
“I previously recommended (Crespin) be reinstated — and believed he could redeem himself and do better in the future. However, given the incident that has just taken place — leaving the county and getting highly intoxicated, I must change my recommendation,” a probation officer wrote in a May violation report. “I spoke at length with (Crespin) about how destructive alcohol is and how he needs to make the most of being on supervision in order to better himself and maintain his freedom.”