S.F. police: Man killed in July standoff had knife
Documents released from deadly incident at Tuscany at St. Francis apartments
Released reports say officers fired 17 shots after the man came toward them with a butcher knife.
Two months after an encounter between Santa Fe police and a young man diagnosed with schizophrenia turned deadly at a midtown apartment complex, the police department released 76 pages of reports, some of them saying officers fired 17 shots at Anthony Benavidez only after he moved rapidly toward them with a butcher knife.
Benavidez, 24, barricaded himself inside an apartment July 19, a day after the management at Tuscany at St. Francis had evicted him for failure to pay rent. Santa Fe County sheriff ’s deputies who served the eviction notice had taken Benavidez to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center for a mental health evaluation.
However, after the hospital released Benavidez in the care of a social worker, he broke into the apartment. The next morning, he used a knife to injure the caseworker, who went to the apartment to help police remove him.
During a standoff with police, Benavidez tossed two homemade devices at officers through a window. One of them appeared to be an oxygen tank outfitted with fireworks and the other was a bottle containing a liquid that officers said smelled of bleach or ammonia, according to police reports. Neither device harmed officers, and no police were injured in the incident.
Lt. Ben Valdez, who was commander of the tactical units on the scene, wrote that Benavidez’s “deadly behavior” led to his decision to send a tactical team to break a tinted apartment window.
In a 15-page report dated eight days after the shooting, Valdez wrote that breaking the window was intended to “provide a vantage point to view his actions in the residence and to deny him the ability to use the room while being concealed to continue attacks on personnel on scene and endanger the public.”
After an officer breaks the window, police are heard on video recordings shouting at Benavidez to show them his hands. Seconds later, city police Officer Jeremie Bisagna fires 16 shots from a handgun through the window. Officer Luke Wakefield fires a single round from his rifle.
After the shooting, Bisagna looked into the lens of a fellow officer’s body camera and said he thought Benavidez had a gun. Reports released this week say Benavidez was holding a butcher knife.
Sgt. Christopher McCord wrote that he watched as the tactical team broke down the window of the apartment.
McCord wrote that he did not activate his body camera because he was on the scene as a medic and wanted to avoid any violation of a federal privacy law that prohibits the release of medical information.
McCord wrote that Benavidez was in the apartment “about 3 feet from the window and had an object in his left hand. He then rapidly charged toward us.”
A Santa Fe Fire battalion chief told Santa Fe police Lt. Anthony Tapia that the chief had been on the scene the previous day when Benavidez was taken to the hospital for a mental health evaluation.
The chief told Tapia that he “could not believe that Benavidez had been released from the hospital” instead of being sent to the Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M.
Asked to comment Wednesday on Benavidez’s release, Arturo Delgado, spokesman for Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, said in an email that the hospital several weeks ago “engaged a behavioral health consultant to conduct an assessment of the behavioral health services currently offered at the hospital and within the community.”
Delgado’s statement noted a ballot initiative rejected by Santa Fe County voters in a special election this week that could have generated more gross receipts tax revenue for a behavioral health crisis treatment center.
“This assessment will help determine what behavioral health services the hospital can reasonably offer and effectively provide to our community, and also help determine how we can work with other local behavioral health providers and organizations,” Delgado said.
“The fact that voters chose not to approve the referendum [Tuesday] will certainly need to be taken into account as we develop our plans for the future.”