Suspect sought in machete attack
Friend of victim injured at Fort Marcy Ballpark identified accused after drinking together
Santa Fe police are searching for a Mescalero man wanted for attempted murder in connection with a late-night machete attack on a homeless man in a sleeping bag at the Fort Marcy Ballpark grandstand.
Detective John Boerth wrote in an arrest affidavit made public Thursday that the victim did not identify Wacey R. Chico, 31, as the man in a ski mask who attacked him during the Oct. 28 incident in the city-owned park north of downtown Santa Fe. Police said they identified Chico with the help of a friend of the victim who reported that Chico had given him an account of the attack while they were drinking together in Taos.
The friend also helped investigators obtain a Facebook photo picture showing Chico wearing a ski mask similar to the one that the victim said his attacker wore while wielding a knife and a machete with a nearly 20-inch blade that he used to stab him in the abdomen, the document says.
While in the hospital, the victim, described in the affidavit as hardly able to speak, told police that he awoke in the park to find an unknown man in a ski mask
and asked the man who he was, to which the assailant replied, “Spirit.”
“I’ve got some bad news for you,” Chico allegedly said. “You’re going to die tonight!”
According to the affidavit, the victim told police he was defenseless while wrapped in the sleeping bag, but he eventually was able to get out of it and punch the machete out of Chico’s hand. During the fight, he told police, the two tumbled down the steps of the grandstand before Chico got on top of him and began choking him with his hands and two leather necklaces.
The victim said he tried to escape by running across the baseball field, but he encountered a locked gate, according to the affidavit, at which time the attacker began laughing and told him he “should just give up and to not fight it and just let go.”
Now cornered, the victim said he decided to charge at his assailant and managed to bring him to the ground before fleeing, the affidavit says. After futile attempts to find help, he tapped on the window of a nearby home, and the residents called police.
On Nov. 22, the victim’s friend showed up at Santa Fe police headquarters, according to the affidavit, and told officers that Chico had confided to him that he had wanted to kill the man at Fort Marcy Ballpark because the victim “had been laughing at him and making fun of him earlier.”
Shortly afterward, the friend said, Chico told him that he “knew too much,” the affidavit says, and later confronted him at a camping spot where he pulled a machete out of a backpack. The friend told police that he threw gravel in Chico’s face and escaped to a lodge in Taos.
The friend said he then hitchhiked to Santa Fe to tell police what he knew, the court document says. The New Mexican asked Santa Fe police spokesman Greg Gurulé for any photos of Chico and whether he has a criminal record. Gurulé said he was unable to provide any more information about Chico beyond what is contained in the affidavit.
When asked for details about whether the victim is recovering from his injuries, Gurulé, referencing a federal privacy law, replied in an email “that is a question for the hospital and their HIPPA considerations.”
The only case found Thursday in searches of court records across the state that matches Chico’s name and birth date is a 2005 misdemeanor charge of escaping or attempting to escape from the custody of the state Children, Youth and Families Department. A Ruidoso magistrate dismissed the charge nearly 10 years after it was filed, records show.
In addition to attempted firstdegree murder, Chico is wanted in connection with a felony count of tampering with evidence.
The arrest warrant describes Chico as having black hair and brown eyes, standing 6 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds.
The document lists an address in Mescalero, in Otero County. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is asked to call Santa Fe police at 505-428-3710. Anonymous tips can be provided to the nonprofit Crime Stoppers program at 505-955-5050.