SF carjacking victim choked, beaten

Robber crashes stolen Jaguar but gets away

SANTA FE — An unknown suspect violently carjacked a man, choking him from the back seat and then beating him last week and led Santa Fe officers on a brief high-speed chase before crashing the stolen car and running away.

According to reports by the Santa Fe Police Department, a 69-year-old man said he was leaving his work studio in the 1600 block of Jay Street, which crosses Second Street east of Cerrillos Road, just after midnight on Friday and got into his black Jaguar.

“(The victim) stated that he got into the driver’s seat of his vehicle when an unidentified male individual, who was seated in the back seat, placed an object, which he described to be a belt or a strap, around his throat and began to pull backward restricting his airway,” a police report says.

The man said he struggled for about a minute before he was able to get out of the car. He said he fell on the ground and was hit repeatedly with a blunt object in the back of the head and the face.

The car owner was able to get to a neighbor’s house for help and was taken to a hospital to treat several lacerations.

Later, officer Erasmo Montijo spotted the car in the area of Paseo de Peralta and West Manhattan Street near downtown and initially waited for other officers to get to the area before initiating a traffic stop, reports say. Montijo finally tried to pull the car over on Paseo de Peralta, but the car sped past a red light on St. Francis Drive and continued onto Hickox Street at about 70 to 80 mph.

The suspect crashed at a dead end on Arroyo de las Cruces Road, near Frenchy’s Field park, and fled. SFPD spokesman Greg Gurule said Tuesday that there are currently no identified suspects.

A pellet gun was found inside the crashed car, according to the police reports.