Two of the three suspects have been identified as OH fugitives James D. Nelson II and Jesse D. Hanes.
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Sheriff’s deputies have taken over public safety duties in Hatch while the small police department mourns Chavez’s death. Nelson is being held on a fugitive warrant.
Hanes is now hospitalized, Jameson said. Authorities identified him as 33-year-old Jose Chavez.
FBI investigators were in Las Cruces on Saturday helping to process evidence, Sheriff Enrique “Kiki” Vigil said.
The Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Department says the conference is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. MDT.
OH authorities had said that Hanes and Nelson, 36, were believed to have fled the state and were armed and extremely unsafe, warning that the two men have a violent criminal history.
The two were arrested after a high speed chase with police.
A Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Deputy confirmed to KRQE that the officer involved in that incident during the traffic stop died.
This story has corrected to show that the age of suspect Jesse Hanes is 38, not 36.
Hanes and another of the passengers in his vehicle are wanted by authorities in OH in connection with the fatal shooting of a 62-year-old man on July 25, Ohio’s Chillicothe Gazette reported.
Officer Jose Chavez was shot when he approached a auto during a traffic stop near a convenience store in the small village of Hatch, New Mexico, the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
Additional charges are pending against Hanes, who is from Columbus, Ohio and had two passengers in his auto at the time of the traffic stop, she said. The condition of the driver is now unknown.
Authorities say the confrontation began when Chavez pulled over Hanes in the village of Hatch, about 40 miles northwest of Las Cruces.
Hanes then fled but sheriff’s deputies were able to stop him using a tire-deflating device.
Hanes and Nelson, Columbus and Newark residents respectively, were on the run.
Authorities say the confrontation began in the village of Hatch, about 40 miles northwest of Las Cruces, when Chavez pulled over Hanes, who was driving a luxury vehicle with Nelson and the hitchhiker as passengers. A second officer arrived to assist Chavez in the traffic stop when a passenger got out of the Lexus and fired upon the officers.
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Thirty-three-year-old Hatch Officer Jose Chavez was taken to a Texas hospital, and died. That suspect sustained a gunshot to the right thigh, but it is unclear who shot the suspect.
