Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 124, No. 115 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
May 14, 2015
Thursday
www.rdrnews.com
Forgery suspect at large after high-speed chase By Jared Tucker Multimedia Journalist
It was supposed to be a simple traffic stop Monday afternoon near the intersection of Bland and Meadowbrook. A woman with an arrest warrant was spotted in a green Honda by a Roswell police officer. But it turned into a highspeed pursuit that lasted almost 20 minutes as the chase zoomed out east of Roswell then came back to town through a school zone around 3 p.m. When it was over, the wanted woman, Desiree Ponce, slipped away from police while the alleged driver, 24-year-old Michael Trujillo, was arrested.
According to dispatch logs obtained by the Daily Record, the incident began at 3:02 p.m. when a Roswell Police officer spotted Ponce in a green Honda near Bland and Meadowbrook and attempted to stop the vehicle. Radio traffic indicates the vehicle may have stopped at first, but then continued east on Bland Street to Red Bridge Road, where the car turned north. The Roswell officer followed the vehicle from a distance, and asked dispatchers to call the New Mexico State Police and Chaves County Sheriff’s Office for assistance. Once the vehicle reached U.S. 380, it turned east a n d p rocee d ed to mile
marker 166 where it turned around and headed west towards Roswell. At 3:16 p.m. a Chaves County Sheriff’s deputy got behind the vehicle and the pursuit began, reaching 100 mph just one minute later. The pursuit continued on into Roswell, passing mile marker 159, Whitemill Road and Red Bridge Roads. At 3:19 p.m., radio traffic and call logs indicate a Roswell police officer was standing by at Second and Atkinson Streets to block traffic for the safety of passing motorists, while another officer, who initiated the traffic stop, disengaged from the pursuit as CCSO had taken over. Once the pursuit
went North on Atkinson, the lead deputy lost sight of the car after it drove through multiple traffic cones and disappeared near Atkinson and Cherry Streets at 3:21 p.m. At 3:26 p.m., a resident who lives on the 700 block of El Dora called 911 stating a male subject was attempting to make entry into her house, just a few minutes after RPD Officer Mike Law radioed that the male suspect was seen jumping over a fence at a house on the same block. Trujillo was detained and subsequently arrested while other officers set up a parameter to find Ponce. Ponce is wanted for four counts of forgery which
Courtesy Photos
Desiree Ponce, left, in December 2013. Michael Trujillo, 24, is pictured after his arrest for aggravated fleeing from an officer Monday. stemmed from two different incidents, according to multiple criminal complaints filed in magistrate court. She was stopped by JCPenney security on
Sept. 26, 2014, after she was observed entering a dressing room with a pair of pants and some other it e m s , b u t e x it e d with See CHASE, Page A2
United Blood Services to open community blood drive center Staff Report
Timothy P. Howsare Photo
United Blood Services, located off 19th Street near Lovelace Regional Hospital, will be opening its community blood center on Saturday.
It’s probably something you don’t think about much, but it is vital to all our lives — blood. Everyone needs blood to survive and giving blood is a great way to help those in need. Every two seconds, someone needs blood. Each day, patients across the country receive approximately 39,000 units of this life-
saving resource. And here in New Mexico, we need approximately 250-300 blood donations every day to keep our hospital shelves stocked and prepared, because this year alone, many thousands of patients in our area could require blood transfusions. Patients who receive blood transfusions are people who have been See BLOOD, Page A3
ABQ man receives Revenue plan for Spaceport America 7-year sentence for gets go-ahead from authority board Roswell burglary By Jeff Tucker Record Staff Writer
An Albuquerque man has been sentenced to seven years in prison after a jury found him guilty of burglarizing a home near Roswell in October. Brandon Weideman, 34, was convicted Friday of residential burglary and possession of burglary tools following a jury trial before Fifth Judicial District Judge Steven Bell. Weideman was sentenced by Bell to three years in prison for the residential burglary. Weideman was also found to be a habitual offender, which added four years to his sentence to the New Mexico Corrections
Weideman Department, for a total of seven years. According to a criminal complaint, Weideman was caught on Oct. 9, 2014, while burglarizing a home See BURGLARY, Page A3
LAS CRUCES (AP) — Spaceport America launched a new business plan Wednesday to find ways to generate revenue as it tries to get out from under the shadow of struggling client Virgin Galactic. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority’s board of directors officially approved the five-year plan proposed by Spaceport America CEO Christine Anderson. According to documents released by Spaceport, the futuristic facility intends to generate profit by luring resources in fields within and outside of aerospace. At the same time, the company intends to ramp up suborbital spaceflight activi-
AP Photo
ty in 2017 and make New Mexico the place for “more annual non-test spaceflights than any other state by 2020.” Spaceport America has only two high-profile tenants — Virgin Galactic and SpaceX. The facility’s success has been tied
mostly to Virgin Galactic. But Virgin’s space flight plans suffered a setback last fall when a rocket-powered spacecraft broke apart during a test flight in the California desert, killing one pilot. Officials say they will leverage the facility’s sur-
This Dec. 9, 2014, file photo shows the taxiway leading to the hangar at Spaceport America in Upham. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority’s board of directors officially approved Wednesday the five-year budget plan proposed by Spaceport America CEO Christine Anderson.
rounding southern New Mexico landscape into a reason for new customers to set up shop there. Under this five-year time frame, Spaceport America See SPACEPORT, Page A3
New Mexico gets waiver on federal teacher requirements ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — The U.S. Department of Education will give New Mexico a waiver on requiring all classrooms have a “highly qualified” teacher as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law, state officials announced late Tuesday. The New Mexico Public Education Department said that waiver will give state officials more flexibility to teacher qualification restrictions and help rural school districts with limited resources meet overall federal guidelines.
In a letter to state officials, U.S. Education Department Assistant Secretary Deborah Delisle said the waiver would allow the state Public Education Department to use the term “highly qualified teacher” to refer to a teacher who receives an “effective,” ‘‘highly effective” and “exemplary” rating based on New Mexico’s new teacher evaluation system. No Child Left Behind defines “highly qualified” as obtaining full state certification and not having “certification or licensure require-
ments waived on an emergency, temporary or provisional basis.” “I believe this waiver will increase the quality of instruction and improve the academic achievement of students by focusing on a teacher’s effectiveness in impacting student outcomes,” Delisle wrote. The teacher waiver is believed to be one of the first of its kind given to a state under No Child Left Behind. Under the current federal law, a “highly qualified” physics teach-
Today’s Forecast
Today’s Obituaries Page A6
HIGH 82 LOW 52
• Michael Murphy
er who is rated highly effective with a strong record of student achievement growth cannot teach an algebra course. That teacher would first have to become “highly qualified” in math. The waiver, requested by New Mexico, allows school districts to replace credentials with demonstrated effectiveness. State officials say that physics teacher can now teach math. Education Secretary Hanna Skandera called the waiver “a big win for New Mexico’s students”
and a called it a common-sense approach for the state’s smaller districts. “This is not about an art teacher teaching physics,” Skandera said. “It allows us to base our decisions at the local level.” Skandera said New Mexico was able to get the waiver thanks to its new teacher evaluation system that generated data the U.S. Education Department needed to make its decision. See TEACHER, Page A3 Index
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