He carjacked a 36-year-old man, shooting him in the stomach after the man refused to accompany him, police said. “They should be considered armed and extremely unsafe”.
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But the daytime encounter with Jesse Hanes and James Nelson on Friday turned out to be deadly for one of the eight police officers in Hatch, 190 miles south of Albuquerque. A third man in the vehicle was a hitchhiker who is being treated as a witness and won’t be charged, Jameson said.
Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Spokesperson Kelly Jameson has confirmed that Jose Chavez died at University Medical Center in El Paso after he was airlifted from the scene of a shooting in the 700 block of Franklin in the Village of Hatch around 3:45 p.m. Friday afternoon.
The cop was shot as another officer arrived, who opened fire on the Lexus as it sped away.
A third man in the auto was a hitchhiker who is being treated as a witness and won’t be charged, Jameson said.
The suspects raced down Interstate 25 at speeds topping 100 miles per hour, the Sheriff’s office said. It warned that the two men have a violent criminal history. Witnesses said they heard approximately six shots.
After taking a Chevrolet Cruze at a rest stop, the men went onto a state highway, but stop sticks were used to flatten their tires, and they eventually crashed into a wood pile, according to The Chillicothe Gazette.
Hanes and Nelson are wanted in OH in the July 25 shooting death of a 62-year-old man just outside Chillicothe, about 60 miles south of Columbus.
FBI investigators were in Las Cruces on Saturday helping to process evidence, Sheriff Enrique “Kiki” Vigil said. He had a gun shot wound to the leg and was taken to a local hospital, Jameson said.
It’s not clear why Officer Chavez pulled the vehicle over or whether he knew two of the men inside it were wanted for murder.
Officer Chavez had two children, the Chicago Tribune said.
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“At the time I was in my office and I heard it over the radio, “officer down”, said Sheriff Kiki Vigil. She was a crime, government, and breaking news reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter for the Waukesha Freeman newspaper.
