More details are emerging about the changes to state law being proposed by New Mexico’s governor for a special legislative session planned in July.

Two high-ranking members of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s staff discussed five legislative proposals with a panel of lawmakers from the House of Representative and the Senate on Wednesday afternoon.

“What the governor is looking to do with the bills I’m going to discuss, first, is to really take some small, necessary steps to really help those people who are either an extreme danger to themselves, or an extreme danger to others,” the governor’s general counsel Holly Agajanian said.

Agajanian and Benjamin Baker, the governor’s senior public safety advisor, presented the discussion drafts to the legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee.

The final proposals could significantly change between now and when the special session begins on July 18 in Santa Fe.

One of the proposals would require judges to advise a local district attorney in New Mexico to consider starting the process of involuntary commitment in a locked mental health facility.

Under the nine-page draft shared with the committee, the court could confine someone for up to a week whenever they determine that person is not competent to participate in their own legal defense, they aren’t dangerous, and the judge dismisses the criminal case.

The draft also proposes that if any of the criminal charges are a serious violent offense, or involve a gun, or if the defendant has been found incompetent to stand trial at least twice in the past year, a judge could put that person into a locked mental health facility for up to a week.

Agajanian said the draft bill is trying to solve the problem of cases getting dismissed due to defendants being incompetent to stand trial.

“You have certain people who cycle through, and through, and through, who are very likely either going to get worse and harm themselves in one way or another, or harm someone else,” she said. 

The proposed changes to the state law are meant to allow for the assessment of those people “to see whether or not they do need to be committed for separate mental health treatment,” she said.

“Because obviously there is something going on, and the crimes they’re committing aren’t violent enough or dangerous enough to keep them in a facility until they can establish competency,” Agajanian said.

Another related proposal would change the legal definitions of “harm to self” and “harm to others” in the state law that governs commitment in a locked mental health facility.

Sen. Katy Duhigg (D-Albuquerque) said she read the proposed definitions and thought, “Boy, this would apply to half the legislators I know.”

“This is really, really broad language,” she said. “It’s going to sweep up so many people who I don’t think it would be appropriate for them to get swept up in this.”

Duhigg asked about the meaning of the term “extreme destruction of property” used in the draft, and pointed out it doesn’t specify property of others.

Agajanian said “that’s a great distinction that we could certainly add.”

“Historically, this language is meant to pull in people like arsonists,” Agajanian said. “You could set your own house on fire. Narrowing it to the destruction of property of another might fix one problem and cause another, but I’m certainly open to conversation about that.”

Winter Torres, CEO and founder of the New Mexico Eviction Prevention and Diversion Program, attended most of Wednesday’s hearing in person and gave public comment at the end of the day.

“I don’t think this session is about public safety, I think it’s about criminalizing homelessness,” Torres said. “That is the primary target of the majority of the bills that are introduced.”

There hasn’t been community interaction or public consultation about that, Torres said.

“We know the answer to folks who churn: it’s permanent supportive housing,” she said. “We know what the evidence is: we know criminalizing doesn’t work.”

Instead, state officials should be using Medicaid funding to pay for housing, she said.

“Housing is a primary social determinant of health, and locking folks up is not a treatment modality,” she said.

Peter Cubra, a retired attorney who helped dismantle the state-run institutions that held people with developmental disabilities in New Mexico, also gave public comment via Zoom. He asked the committee to “please slow this down.”

“What I heard today, in terms of changing the entire civil commitment statute, is more controversial and more impactful than things we have spent literally eight sessions trying to sort out with respect to forced treatment,” Cubra said. “It really would disserve every person with a disability in New Mexico for you to act, under these circumstances, so swiftly.”

In addition to harming people with disabilities who aren’t eagerly seeking treatment, if lawmakers were to enact the administration’s proposal, “there are hundreds of people begging for treatment who would not have access to the beds that they’re begging to get into.”

“Instead, we would be holding people against their will in a form of involuntary treatment which is almost never effective,” Cubra said. “Please slow this down and let the regular session address these issues.”

As Jesus Cadena sat on his front porch in Ruidoso, smoking cigarettes and watching the helicopters and airplanes drop water over the South Fork Fire, he had no way of knowing that according to New Mexico State Police he was officially unaccounted for in a disaster.

Cadena and his family are one of thousands who reunited during the hours after the South Fork and Salt fires tore through neighborhoods and forest in southeastern New Mexico. A list of unaccounted people that has grown and shrunk since the fires ignited on June 17 now sits at one, officials with the Village of Ruidoso said on Wednesday.

Two people died in the fire.

Yesterday, officials reported that a list of 89 people it was aware of were “unaccounted for” were a priority to contact after the fires and floods. 

Michael Scales, a Lincoln County emergency management specialist, told Source New Mexico that all people unaccounted for on the list given to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department were located by midday Wednesday. 

Ruidoso police are still looking for the final person on the list. 

Cadena’s reunite after evacuation orders separated family

Thousands of Ruidoso-area residents had to evacuate their homes and businesses last week, fleeing from the treacherous South Fork and Salt fires which continue to smolder. 

But for some people, heartbreak was the first emotion they experienced as loved ones chose to stay behind. 

Cyndi Cadena was one evacuee who had to leave an elderly parent behind in Ruidoso.

“I talked to my mom and dad and my mom tried to persuade my dad and he still didn’t want to leave,” she said.

Cadena takes care of her octogenarian parents in their Ruidoso home near the Walmart Supercenter. Isabel and Jesus Cadena built the cabin in the late 1970s and have lived in the Sacramento Mountain community since.

When the fire started last Monday, Cyndi Cadena said she talked with her brother who works for Mescalero Apache Telecom. As he saw the fires worsen, he told his family they needed to get out of the area. 

Cyndi Cadena said the family was initially told to go to the senior center in Ruidoso Downs, but then they were directed farther away to Roswell.

“We were finding out that Roswell was getting full and there’s no place to stay,” she said. 

Members of the family were able to eventually find space in Roswell, but Cyndi and her parents stayed, trying to help other elderly community members navigate the chaos at the senior center. 

“I was trying to help, you know, because everyone needed help,” Cyndi said. 

The three Cadenas remained in the area into the early Tuesday morning hours. 

Jesus Cadena did not want to leave. Several hours later he was running low on oxygen. 

Cyndi Cadena said as the smoke settled in the sky, the chaos seemed to calm a bit, so she took her parents back to their home and got her father hooked up to his home ventilator. This gave her a chance to grab several more things from the house, let her parents rest and feed them. 

Around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, she said she was ready to take them all down the mountain through Hondo, to Roswell and eventually safety. After trying to persuade her father again, she closed the windows, sealed up the house and left with her mother. 

“I said ‘let’s go mom, we gotta go’ and I hugged my dad and I just went out the door and prayed,” she said through tears. 

Her brother-in-law stayed behind to take care of the older Cadena and look in on other elderly residents who did not want to leave Ruidoso.

The Cadena women traveled over and around northern Ruidoso and made their way to Alamogordo where they stayed with family until Thursday. Because internet and cellular service was down back home, they had no way of communicating with the family that stayed. 

She called hotlines dedicated to reuniting people during the fire, asking if anyone knew if her father was still in Ruidoso. Her calls placed Jesus Cadena on a list of officially unaccounted for people that emergency responders tracked during fires and floods.

Cyndi Cadena also called New Mexico State Police for a welfare check, which revealed that her father and brother-in-law were still at the family house.

The family’s concerns were calmed last Thursday during a Facetime call with Jesus Cardena.

“My mom got to see him so they were sentimental and everything,” Cyndi Cadena said about her parents talking through the phone.

She said it gave her mother some comfort to be able to at least see her husband, who still refused to leave Ruidoso because he wanted to wait for the rain that followed.

The family remained separated until Sunday evening, June 23 when evacuation orders were lifted and residents were able to return to their homes and assess the damage. 

Cadena told Source New Mexico via text message that they were able to go to Ruidoso Downs where they all reunited. 

The family home was untouched, but many other community members were not so lucky.

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — New Mexico State Police arrested a suspect accused of shooting and killing someone during an alleged home invasion last week in Las Vegas.

29-year-old Elijah Martinez is accused of breaking into a home at 522 Hermosa Drive in Las Vegas and shooting the homeowner’s husband.

Officers responded to the scene and reportedly saw a vehicle leaving the area. They caught up to the vehicle and stopped it.

Officers identified the driver as Martinez. They say he had blood on his clothing, a pistol close to him and shell casings on the floor of the vehicle.

Police detained Martinez. As they detained him, Las Vegas police officers responded and found 53-year-old Nathan Romero dead at the scene.

They say agents learned Martinez drove around town in his vehicle with a friend after work. Then, after arguing, the friend left the truck, causing them to hide due to Martinez allegedly being armed. The friend reportedly told police they heard a single gunshot coming from the vehicle before Martinez drove off.

Martinez allegedly drove to the Romero home and got into a verbal altercation with them. He then allegedly broke into the home, pulled out a handgun and shot Romero. Then, Martinez reportedly fired several more shots while going back in before leaving altogether.

Elijah Martinez was arrested and booked into the San Miguel County Detention Center on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery, criminal damage to property of over $1000, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon against a household member and shooting at or from a motor vehicle.

The shooting is still under investigation.