Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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PORTALES - A mother-daughter pair of former daycare operators were sentenced Tuesday for leaving two young girls suffering hours in a hot car the afternoon of July 25, 2017, in Portales. Mary and Sandi Taylor were given 36 and 30 years in prison, respectively, following an emotional hearing that included impassioned pleas from people at both ends of the full courtroom. On the victim side were calls for accountability and justice, and on the defense side for compassion and...
PORTALES — The former daycare operators convicted last month of reckless child abuse are scheduled Monday for sentencing. Their defense attorney is meanwhile pursuing motions to appeal or mitigate the guilty verdicts. Mother-daughter Mary and Sandi Taylor each face 36 years in prison on dual convictions of child abuse by reckless disregard, pertaining to the death of one girl and serious injury to another. The women left both young children in a hot car in July of 2017 in Portales. Tye Harmon filed multiple motions in r...
PORTALES — A man convicted Tuesday of sexually assaulting a young girl six years ago in Floyd faces up to 18 years in prison in a sentencing hearing at month’s end. A Roosevelt County jury found Benjamin Pritchett, 58, guilty of first-degree felony criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13 years of age, according to a news release from 9th Judicial District Attorney Andrea Reeb. He was arrested in Midland, Texas, in October of 2016, two months after the victim’s aunt reported the assault occurring in Pritc...
CLOVIS - A Curry County jury took just 90 minutes Thursday to convict Darryl Turner II of voluntary manslaughter for the 2017 shooting death of David McDonald at the Clovis Apartments. Turner, 31, faces six years in prison with a potential addition of four years based on prior felony convictions in California, where he was arrested early last year on a fugitive warrant from Clovis police for an open count of murder. In closing arguments Thursday morning, the state asked...
CLOVIS - A multi-million dollar area-wide pipeline project stretching back over half a century broke ground Tuesday on the first phase of its Interim Ground Water Project. With a price tag over $28.6 million, Finished Water 2 has been a major focus of the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority since 2016, when it completed the Phase 1 project of a $14 million intake structure at the Ute Reservoir in Quay County. That facility was named for Darrel Bostwick, who had...
CLOVIS - The trial continues this week for a man arrested last year in the 2017 shooting death of a man at the Clovis Apartments. Darryl Turner II, 31, is charged with second-degree murder for the Sept. 5, 2017, killing of David McDonald. A jury consisting of four women and 10 men was selected Monday morning and heard opening arguments that afternoon followed by testimony from three Clovis Police Department officers. "People were doing things they ought not to have been...
PORTALES - Commissioners were met Friday afternoon with applause from a packed courtroom after voting unanimously to declare Roosevelt County a "Second Amendment sanctuary." The special meeting followed a request at Tuesday's regular commission meeting from Sheriff Malin Parker, who along with a similarly sizable crowd that day asked representatives to table a resolution opposing pending gun control legislation from the capital in favor of one that went further. "There are a...
CLOVIS - Compared to the $28 million price tag for the interim groundwater pipeline section on which the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority breaks ground Tuesday, another few thousand dollars isn't much. Moreover in the eyes of board members, it's also a worthwhile investment for possibly bringing the organization into forthcoming discussions on the water contamination situation around Cannon Air Force Base. The ENMWUA board on Thursday approved a $15,000 "scope of...
PORTALES - After input from a packed courtroom of citizens urging their representatives to send a stronger message to Santa Fe, the Roosevelt County Commission on Tuesday morning tabled a "watered down" resolution opposing pending gun-control legislation. Commissioners scheduled a meeting Friday to consider declaring the county a "Second Amendment sanctuary." Commissioners moved their regular meeting location from the ground floor of the Roosevelt County courthouse to the...
CLOVIS - For killing two library employees, injuring four other people and terrorizing dozens more at the Clovis-Carver Public Library on Aug. 28, 2017, Nathaniel Jouett was sentenced Friday to two life sentences plus 40 years in prison. Judge James Hudson announced the decision after taking over two days in recess following emotional testimony in a sentencing hearing that lasted Monday through Wednesday morning in Curry County. The sentences run concurrent. The earliest he... Full story
CLOVIS - Nathaniel Jouett will be 51 at his earliest possible release from prison for the "monstrous acts" he committed at age 16 in a matter of minutes the afternoon of Aug. 28, 2017. That's less time than prosecutors wanted and more than his defense counsel recommended in a searing sentencing hearing that started Monday in Curry County and concluded with a decision Friday afternoon from 5th Judicial District Judge James Hudson. During that time the court heard emotional...
CLOVIS — Police said Thursday evening they were investigating a possible suicide after a high school girl fell to her death from an upper level of the nine-story Hotel Clovis. NaKiyah Brown was less than two months from her 17th birthday. “She was just beautiful,” her cousin Akarielah Pleasant told The News on Friday afternoon. “Always willing to make positivity out of a rough moment,” Brown played saxophone in the Clovis High School band, did well in math, had friends i...
CLOVIS — The former director of Clovis’ senior meals program was arrested Thursday for allegedly embezzling over $24,000 since April. Cherisse Perez, 34, entered no plea Friday in magistrate court to 19 embezzlement charges of which 16 are felonies, according to court records. City staff and board members of the Curry Resident Senior Meals Association confirmed last month that Perez recently departed the program, but cited the “personnel matter” when declining to specify when or under what circumstances. Most of those f...
CLOVIS - A woman was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges stemming from her short-lived jail escape this summer. Kaitlyn Martinez-Arington, 26, faced up to 19 years in the open-ended agreement, but Judge Matthew Chandler ran her 8-year prior felony enhancements concurrent with one another and consecutive to two 18-month sentences for each of her new convictions: escape from jail and battery on a health care worker. Deputy District Attorney...
CLOVIS - Speaking through tears Wednesday morning to dozens of victims who had addressed him Monday in their own impact statements, Nathaniel Jouett apologized and said he wanted to get better. "I'm absolutely horrified by my actions and take full responsibility," he said in his first public address in court since the Aug. 28, 2017, library shooting for which he was convicted last year. Jouett, who turned 18 last month, pleaded guilty to 30 felony counts from that violence, in...
CLOVIS - In a full courtroom across the street from where a deadly library shooting shook the community less than 18 months earlier, prosecutors and victims asked that a judge have Nathaniel Jouett serve the rest of his life in prison. That is what the state's request would amount to, anyway. District Attorney Andrea Reeb requested Chaves County Judge James Hudson give Jouett, now 18, a term of 96 years. That sum comes from the 30 felony counts to which he pleaded guilty last...
CLOVIS — Robert Vilandry was still making inventory Monday afternoon of the items stolen in a multi-party, two-stop break-in to his Main Street antiques shop over the weekend. “BB guns, pellet guns, spurs, pocket watches,” he told The News, surveying cabinets near the store’s entrance, a stone’s throw from where an actual stone was lobbed through the front glass door soon after midnight Sunday. Then there were the pieces of squash blossom jewelry, a guitar, some video games, and up to 50 swords, including one so large the...
CLOVIS - Emphasizing his client's potential for rehabilitation and the circumstances preceding the deadly library shooting for which he was convicted last year, defense attorney Stephen Taylor asked the judge Tuesday morning that Nathaniel Jouett only serve 20 years of his forthcoming sentence in prison. Taylor's recommendation came on the second day of a sentencing hearing this week, following the state's request Monday that 5th Judicial District Judge James Hudson give...
PORTALES - Dozens of pink and blue balloons took flight Tuesday from outside the Roosevelt County courthouse, one of the first light moments for anyone involved in the emotional trial that had played out in the five days before. It was a moment of relief for many, a feeling that justice had been served on behalf of two young girls left in a hot car for almost three hours the afternoon of July 25, 2017. Yet for the former daycare pair convicted of felony child abuse charges, an...
CLOVIS — As both the state and the county speak out for action from the Air Force regarding the chemical contamination to groundwater supplies from firefighting activities on base, an aggrieved dairy owner is seeking redress through civil action against the manufacturer of the foam used in those firefighting activities. Art Schaap, who's spoken previously at commission meetings in Curry and Roosevelt counties as to the impacts of the PFOS/PFOA contamination to his dairy and residence, told The News he'd sent out a tort c...
CLOVIS - A lengthy court process ensuing from the deadly shooting at the Clovis-Carver Public Library is almost at its end, with a five-day sentencing hearing starting Monday in Curry County. Nathaniel Jouett, now 18, pleaded guilty last year to 33 felony counts resulting from the Aug. 28, 2017, violence, when he killed library employees Wanda Walters and Krissie Carter and sent four other people to the hospital. His sentence ranges from probation to multiple life sentences...
DORA - You can get a sense of what Scotty Watson meant to the communities he served by the massive crowd Wednesday at his funeral, a group of some 800 filling the Dora High School gymnasium unlike any event there short of some championship games years back. "This was probably one of the largest funerals that I've seen in this area. We've had a few fire chiefs that we buried and we hadn't seen this kind of turnout; it's very impressive," Dora Fire Chief Paul Luscombe told The...
CLOVIS — Soon after Valentine’s Day, things will still be coming up roses in Clovis. Or rather, they’ll be coming up with “rose colored glasses,” a concession item harkening to the signature song of Grand Ole Opry regular and celebrated country musician John Conlee. With the release last year of the third disc of a greatest hits collection spanning four years of charting music, Nashville-based Conlee performs at 7 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Clovis Civic Center. He spoke with The News last week to share his excitement at being bac...
PORTALES — Daycare workers who admitted to leaving two toddlers in a hot car in July 2017 were found guilty Tuesday of charges that could send them to prison for up to 36 years. Mary and Sandi Taylor were immediately remanded into custody following the Roosevelt County jury’s guilty verdict, which came about four hours after it began deliberating. The courtroom filled with tears on both sides when the verdict was announced. “(I’m) very glad to see we’re taking child abuse in... Full story
PORTALES - Mary and Sandi Taylor did most everything together while running their daycare. Now they sit together facing trial for the 2017 death of one young girl in their care and the serious injury to another. Since 2013, the duo ran "Taylor's Tots" daycare from their residence in Portales, earning a good reputation for looking after young children. In February 2017, they passed a semi-annual inspection from the state's Children, Youth and Families Department, and five month...
