Raid in New Mexico uncovers bizarre storylines
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A raid on a New Mexico desert compound turned up 11 children wearing rags and living in filth and also broke open a bizarre tale of guns, exorcism and a search for a missing young boy who suffers from seizures.
The boy’s father was among five people — another man and three women believed to be the mother of the 11 children — arrested after the raid near the border with Colorado, and documents made public in a court filing Monday said the father told the boy’s mother before fleeing Georgia that he wanted to perform an exorcism on the child because he believed he was possessed by the devil.
Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said deputies arrested the father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, and the four others on child-abuse charges after finding the 11 children inside a filthy makeshift compound in the tiny community of Amali. It was littered with “odorous trash” and lacking clean water.
Wahhaj, 39, was found heavily armed with multiple firearms, including a loaded AR-15, before he was taken into custody, the sheriff said.
Wahhaj’s son, Abdul-ghani, who was 3 when he disappeared in December, was not among the children found, but Hogrefe said authorities have reason Debris is piled up outside a New Mexico desert compound where 11 children were found living in filth. Five adults were arrested and charged with child abuse. to believe the boy was at the compound several weeks ago.
Hogrefe’s deputies are searching for the child, along with the FBI and Georgia authorities in Clayton County, where officials say the boy was living before his father took him around Dec. 1, 2017.
The boy’s mother told authorities her son suffers from seizures, cannot walk because of severe medical issues and requires constant attention.
She told police in December that Wahhaj had taken the boy for a trip to a park but never returned.
Clayton County police said in a missing persons bulletin that Wahhaj and his son were last seen Dec. 13 in Alabama, traveling with five children and two adults.
Wahhaj told police the group was traveling from Georgia to New Mexico to go camping.
The trooper who wrote the report said he found no camping equipment in or near the vehicle but that Wahhaj was in possession of three handguns, two rifles, a bag of ammunition and a bulletproof vest. Wahhaj told the trooper he owned the guns legally and had a Georgia permit to carry concealed weapons.
The search at the compound came amid a two-month investigation in collaboration with Clayton County authorities and the FBI, according to Hogrefe. He said FBI agents surveilled the area a few weeks ago but did not find probable cause to search the property.
That changed when Georgia detectives forwarded a message to Hogrefe’s office that initially had been sent to a third party, saying: “We are starving and need food and water.”
What authorities found was what Hogrefe called “the saddest living conditions and poverty” he has seen in 30 years on the job.
Hogrefe said the adults and children — ages 1 to 15 — had no shoes, wore dirty rags for clothing and “looked like Third World country refugees.” Other than a few potatoes and a box of rice, there was little food in the compound.