New Mexico
New Mexico governor urges public safety bills to be passed in final days of session
Time is running out for lawmakers to debate and approve bills. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is using the little time left to push lawmakers to get even more public safety bills across the finish line.
SANTA FE, N.M. – Time is running out for lawmakers to debate and approve bills. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is using the little time left to push lawmakers to get even more public safety bills across the finish line.
It’s no secret Lujan Grisham has ambitious plans to improve public safety in New Mexico. She called a special legislative session last summer just to get a criminal competency reform bill across the finish line.
While the Legislature already sent her a collection of six public safety bills this year – including a competency bill – she’s pressuring lawmakers to keep going.
“I think there’s a lot more to be done,” said Lujan Grisham.
With nine days left to go, the governor is narrowing her public safety ambitions. She posted on social media Wednesday, urging New Mexicans to call their state representatives and senators and ask them to prioritize five bills.
Those bills include expanding New Mexico’s red flag law, increasing the punishments for assaulting a peace officer and reworking the state’s definitions of “harm to self” and “harm to others.”
“By changing this definition, we’re dealing with facts on the ground, things that have happened in the recent past, as opposed to a prediction of what may happen,” said state Sen. Moe Maestas.
All three of those bills are past the halfway point, so they still have a shot of crossing the finish line.
A bill expanding the state’s human trafficking laws is just barely past the starting line, while a Republican-backed proposal increasing punishments for felons caught with firearms is still at square one.
“If we’re going to limit the Second Amendment for people, which is what we keep seeing, come over. Shouldn’t we at least address felons who get firearms and deal with that situation? I think the answer is obviously yes,” said state Sen. Craig Brandt.
Many of the committees these bills are waiting for are backlogged with many other proposals, and lawmakers only have so much time left. But it’s clear the governor doesn’t want to wait another year for them to take action on these bills.
A man is facing murder charges after allegedly admitting to deputies that he fatally shot two people inside a New Mexico home after receiving “an encrypted message in a cockroach” that he “needed to kill,” authorities say.
Alexis Hernandez, 25, was arrested and charged with two open counts of murder in connection with a Friday incident inside a southwest Albuquerque home, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.
Hernandez was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Saturday morning, and it is not immediately clear if he has retained a lawyer.
Authorities have not identified the men killed in the incident or the two young children who were also found inside the house at the time.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit filed at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court, deputies responded to reports of gunfire in southwest Albuquerque just before 10:30 p.m. When deputies arrived, they were met at the front door by Hernandez, who “had a firearm on his waistband and a Marine Corps Sabre on his hip,” the arrest warrant said.
Hernandez, who was immediately detained, told deputies he was in the Marines and “had to do what he had to do,” the warrant states. He then allegedly stated there were two dead bodies inside the residence.
Once inside the house, the warrant states, deputies found one dead man “with possible gunshot wounds” in the front of the house and a second man with apparent stab wounds in an attached apartment.
The two children who were found inside were safely removed from the residence, the arrest warrant states.
In an interview with deputies after he was taken into custody, Hernandez said that he knew the two slain men, one of whom was the owner of the property, according to the warrant. He then allegedly said he had believed the property owner was a friend who had been stalking him during the days leading up to the incident.
The warrant states Hernandez alleged the friend had placed cameras in the lights. Hernandez also told deputies that he was allegedly “hearing creepy voices coming from the vents” and “had been getting signs” that he had to end the property owner before he ended him.
Hernandez later allegedly told deputies that he also had received “an encrypted message in a cockroach” that he “needed to kill” the property owner, the warrant says. He added that the property owner allegedly did not like cockroaches.
The warrant states that Hernandez had previously purchased a Glock handgun, which he said he had for “protection.” Hernandez told deputies that on Friday the two men allegedly took him to the back room of the home and that he “was afraid for his life at this point.”
He said he shot the property owner in the head and the other in the kitchen, the warrant says. At one point, Hernandez allegedly told deputies, he had gone to his Honda Pilot to reload his gun before going back to each victim and shooting him again.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the details of the second man’s cause of death.
The warrant states Hernandez admitted that he did not know what to do after the attack, so he “stayed on scene and walked around.” He allegedly added that he knew about the two children at the house and that they saw him shoot the two men.
He added that “he was not going to take the kids or do anything to them,” the warrant says.
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NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Here is a look at scores and highlights from week 12 of Friday Night Football.
6A
- #10 Cibola – 10
- #7 Volcano Vista – 14
- #9 Piedra Vista – 24
- #8 Los Lunas – 28
Game of the Week
- #12 Eldorado – 7
- #5 La Cueva – 41
Las Cruces Joins the Show
5A
- #9 Mayfield – 22
- #8 Highland – 36
- #10 Valley – 23
- #7 Belen – 50
- #11 Capital – 0
- #6 Gadsden – 50
4A
- #11 Portales – 13
- #6 Moriarty – 49
- #12 Valencia – 0
- #5 Albuquerque Academy – 42
- #9 Manzano – 28
- #8 Bernalillo – 31
Bloomfield Joins the Show
St. Michael’s Joins the Show
- #9 Jal – 13
- #8 Navajo Prep – 22
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