Suspect in killing of NMSP officer is charged
Jaremy Alexander Smith held on federal carjacking, firearm counts in death of Justin Hare
Federal agents have filed charges against the man suspected of killing New Mexico State Police Officer Justin Hare.
Jaremy Alexander Smith, 33, of Marion, S.C., faces federal charges of carjacking resulting in death and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.
At an initial hearing Friday, a federal judge ordered Smith to remain in custody pending a pretrial detention hearing March 26.
If convicted, Smith faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on the carjacking charge and a mandatory minimum of 10 years on the firearm charge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release Friday. The case will be prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Paul Mysliwiec and Jack Burkhead.
U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico Alexander Uballez announced the charges — which stemmed from an FBI investigation of Smith’s alleged actions over three days across New Mexico — during a news conference Friday morning alongside state Attorney General Raúl Torrez and Department of Public Safety Cabinet Secretary Jason Bowie.
The criminal complaint made public Friday shed more light on Smith’s ties to New Mexico, including showing he had been in Albuquerque in late February.
Charges had not been filed against Smith in state court as of Friday, but Torrez said his agency would “commit every resource available to this prosecution and hold Mr. Jaremy Smith accountable for his reprehensible actions.”
FBI investigators detailed a series of events between the morning of March 15, when they accuse Smith of fatally shooting Hare on Interstate 40 west of Tucumcari, to March 17, when he was arrested in Albuquerque by Bernalillo County sheriff ’s deputies.
According to the criminal complaint, body-worn camera footage shows
Hare — who is referred to in the complaint as Officer John Doe — pulled up to the white BMW that Smith had been driving at 5:04 a.m. and sat in his cruiser while talking with Smith through the passenger side window, offering him a ride to a nearby town. After Hare asked Smith to step to the front of the police cruiser, investigators said the video shows a flash and “a loud noise consistent with gunfire,” with Hare slumping to the right afterward.
Smith moved around to the driver’s side of the cruiser and more gunfire could be heard in the video, the complaint states, before Smith entered the vehicle and drove off with Hare still inside.
Backup officers were dispatched to the site at 5:09 a.m., after Hare’s “duress signal” was activated, investigators wrote. They found Hare’s cruiser crashed on the north frontage road of I-40, about 14 miles west of the deserted white BMW, with Hare “in the vicinity” of his crashed patrol unit with gunshot wounds to his head and neck, according to the complaint.
Officers found two 9mm shell casings in Hare’s cruiser, investigators wrote, along with four bullets lodged in different places around the cruiser, including one in the lockbox used to store an agency-issued semi-automatic rifle. They also found two cellphones on the ground near the vehicle, one of which belonged to an Albuquerque woman investigators had tied to Smith, according to the complaint.
The investigation placed Smith with the woman in Albuquerque in late February.
Albuquerque police responded to a domestic dispute call Feb. 27 involving an argument between Smith and the 30-year-old woman at a Murphy USA gas station in southwest Albuquerque, according to a report provided by the department. Albuquerque police wrote the woman told them the two had been arguing in her car while she drove and that he began to pull at the steering wheel. No charges were filed from the incident.
Upon review of body-worn camera footage from the February call, FBI investigators wrote, Smith could be seen wearing what appeared to be the same hooded sweatshirt that was seen on Hare’s cameras March 15.
The white BMW that Smith had been driving was found to be registered to Phonesia Machado-Fore, 52, a paramedic in Marion County, S.C., who was found dead the evening of March 15 with a gunshot wound to her head, investigators wrote. Smith was identified as a “person of interest” in that killing, and the woman’s roommate said they were missing a Taurus 9 mm pistol, according to the complaint.
Smith was arrested March 17 in southwestern Albuquerque after Bernalillo County sheriff ’s deputies were tipped off by a gas station attendant — also at a Murphy USA, though a different one from the one cited in the Feb. 27 report — who recognized Smith’s name and South Carolina driver’s license from news reports. Deputies arrived in the area and chased Smith on foot before firing on him multiple times, the complaint states; investigators wrote “a review of [Bernalillo County Sheriff ’s Office] bodyworn camera footage showed Smith reaching for his waistband as officers close in.”
Police reviewed surveillance footage from the gas station showing Smith walking to a white flatbed truck in the area, investigators wrote, and later learned a similar vehicle was reported stolen the day before in Cuervo, N.M., about 13 miles from the site where Hare’s police cruiser was found crashed off I-40. Police recovered 9 mm ammunition from the truck and a Taurus
9 mm pistol from “near where Smith was taken into custody,” the complaint states.
Uballez thanked the gas station clerk whose tip lead to Smith being captured, describing her as “a brave civilian working a normal job 100 miles away from a terrible crime.”
“I want members of our community to remember that last weekend’s tragedy was bookended by hope, by strangers doing the right thing for people they’ve never met,” he said.
Uballez declined to answer questions about Smith’s movements from South Carolina to New Mexico or how he got to Albuquerque after allegedly gunning down Hare.
Investigators wrote Smith has been arrested 13 times by law enforcement in South Carolina and Georgia and convicted of at least two felonies there, including attempted armed robbery and the taking of a hostage by an inmate.
A review of South Carolina Department of Corrections records show he spent eight years in prison on charges of attempted armed robbery and hostage-taking before being released on parole in Marion County in December, according to The Associated Press. The records also show numerous infractions while he was incarcerated, ranging from possessing a weapon to attacking or attempting to injure employees and inmates.
Hare had been with the state police since 2018. Born and raised in New Mexico, he is survived by his parents, girlfriend, and their two young children. He and his girlfriend also had a child on the way.
At a vigil in Tucumcari on Wednesday night, about
200 people paid their respects to the officer as state police vehicles flashed their lights and people held candles and cellphones. A funeral for Hare is scheduled for Wednesday.