Judge tosses charges in fatal wreck during power outage
District attorney has option to open new case in motorcyclist’s death
A state District Court judge on Wednesday dismissed a vehicular homicide case against a Pecos woman who had been charged with killing a motorcyclist in an August crash at a Santa Fe intersection that had gone dark during a widespread power outage.
Judge T. Glenn Ellington, siding with an attorney for 24-year-old Megan Carrillo, said he was dismissing a grand jury indictment against her because a prosecutor failed to present evidence to jurors that “may have been exculpatory.”
Ellington dismissed the case without prejudice, which means prosecutors could refile the charges against Carrillo.
Carrillo, a mother of two young children, struck Jerry Hicks, 39, of Santa Fe around 7:45 p.m. Aug. 7 as he was stopped in front of her at the intersection of Cerrillos and Cristo’s roads, where traffic lights weren’t working. She was charged Nov. 4 with homicide by vehicle, reckless driving and careless driving.
The accident occurred during the worst power outage in the past decade for Public Service Company of New Mexico. A lightning strike had left about 129,000 customers from Los Lunas to Santa Fe without power that evening.
Prosecutor Todd Bullion said the district attorney’s options to continue pursuing the case are to present evidence to a new grand jury or to go through a public preliminary hearing, in which a judge would decide if there’s probable cause to charge Carrillo.
“We’ll look at it, and we’ll consult with the district attorney before making any final decisions,” Bullion said.
Douglas Couleur, Carrillo’s lawyer who had filed the motion to dismiss the indictment in December, said he wasn’t surprised by Ellington’s ruling, but that the case is “back to square one.”
Couleur had requested that a letter he wrote be included in the grand jury presentation to correct errors in testimony by witness Yasmin Lara, who had said she was stopped at the intersection in the lane next to Hicks when Carrillo struck him.
Video evidence shows that Lara was not stopped next to Hicks at the time of the crash, Couleur said, and an officer misidentified Lara’s vehicle when a video of the accident was shown to the grand jury.
But his letter was withheld from the prosecutors’ presentation to jurors, Couleur argued.
Carrillo told officers that the road in front of her had been clear, and that she had looked away for just a moment before seeing Hicks’ motorcycle stopped in front of her, according to police reports.
Dashboard camera video from a police car traveling southbound on Cerrillos Road showed Carrillo’s SUV, traveling northeast on Cerrillos, slamming into the motorcyclist and rolling over him and his motorcycle.
Hicks’ wife and 18-year-old daughter were approaching the intersection in a different vehicle and witnessed the collision, according to police reports.
Hicks owned an irrigation and rainwater harvesting business in the city.