Deputy accused of using patrol truck to strike vehicle
Deputies with the Taos County Sheriff’s Office used a taser to take down one of their own recently.
Deputy Lorenzo Sanchez, 26, resigned this week after he was charged with using his patrol truck to strike a vehicle on State Road 68 the night of Oct. 3, attacking two men at a Taos residence and resisting arrest, prompting another deputy to shoot him with the electroshock device.
Sanchez faces 10 counts – three for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (one against a household member); one for battery upon a peace officer; one for aggravated DWI; two for resisting arrest; two for battery and one for negligent use of a deadly weapon while intoxicated.
Sergeant Jason Rael wrote in a statement of probable cause that he arrived at the residence Oct. 3 to find Sanchez bloodied and with a torn shirt. Sanchez said that he had been involved in a verbal argument with his girlfriend.
Rael said Sanchez smelled of
alcohol and was having difficulty standing. He conducted a field sobriety test on the deputy, who failed one of the exams but refused to take a breathalyzer test.
After Rael ordered two of Sanchez’s fellow deputies, Teddy Flores and Taylor Gwinn, to take him into custody, Sanchez resisted. Rael wrote that at one point Sanchez went toward his patrol unit, where his gun was stored, but Flores took the weapon out of the truck and secured it.
When Sanchez resisted a second time, a third deputy who arrived at the residence, Jose Garcia, shot him with a taser, dropping him to the ground, where he was then handcuffed.
After interviewing several witnesses, Rael wrote that Sanchez’s girlfriend had called her mother to come pick her up from the deputy’s residence in Velarde after the couple had begun to argue earlier that evening.
When the woman’s brother and mother picked her up, Sanchez followed them in his county-owned Dodge Ram and allegedly used the truck to hit their vehicle. Rael said the mother showed him a cellphone video she recorded that shows a sheriff’s patrol unit striking their vehicle with its lights and sirens flashing.
After arriving at the house on Duran Lane, the homeowner told Rael he tried to “calm the situation down,” but alleged that Sanchez hit him in the face. A physical altercation ensued between the two men and the girlfriend’s brother.
Sanchez was taken to Holy Cross Medical Center before being incarcerated at the Taos County
Adult Detention Center.
An arraignment was held in his case Monday morning (Oct. 5) in Taos Magistrate Court and a preliminary examination is set for Oct. 20.
This isn’t the first time an argument between Sanchez and a girlfriend has escalated to criminal charges.
In June, a Río Arriba County jury found Sanchez guilty of negligent use of a deadly weapon in connection to another domestic violence case filed in January 2019. In that case, Sanchez’s former fiancée accused him of attacking her and giving her a gun and bullets when she said she wanted to kill herself. She admitted they had both been drinking.
After the couple reconciled, she testified in his defense at trial, saying that some of the initial statements she had given police were false. The jury found Sanchez not guilty of aggravated assault and battery of a household member with a deadly weapon, the two more serious charges.
Sanchez, who was hired at the sheriff’s office in 2017, was placed back on active duty after the trial had ended.
In 2012, court records also show he was charged in Río Arriba County with aggravated stalking in violation of a protection order and criminal damage to property. He was convicted of the latter charge and the former was dropped in a plea agreement that granted him a conditional discharge after he completed probation in 2014.