Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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PORTALES — A jury is in place, and the trial for two former daycare workers charged more than 18 months ago with the death and serious injury of two young girls in their care begins today. “We’re looking forward to getting the trial moving and getting this tried,” said 9th Judicial District Attorney Andrea Reeb, prosecuting for the state. “It’s been a year and a half now; I think everybody, including defense, victims and defendants are ready to resolve this matter in one way or another.” The mother-daughter duo of Mary and S...
PORTALES - District Judge Donna Mowrer on Monday morning denied a defense motion for a directed verdict in the case of the Portales daycare workers who left children in a hot car. The trial will continue with closing arguments on Tuesday. Mary Taylor and her daughter Sandi Taylor are charged with reckless abuse of a child (results in death) and abuse of a child (results in great bodily harm) following the July 2017 incident. Maliyah Jones died, while Aubriauna Loya was... Full story
You might take your significant other to court at the end of a marriage, but this Valentine’s Day you can start it off there. The 9th Judicial District is offering free marriages. Judge Donna Mowrer said she’s “delighted” to be among those officiating the event, the first of its kind locally but already in practice elsewhere in the state. The romantic holiday is an apt occasion for nuptials, which Mowrer knows well since she herself was married 33 years ago on Valentine’s Day. “What better way to make sure your spouse does...
For local educators in search of relevant lessons for their students on concepts of engineering and energy careers, it doesn't get much more hands-on than climbing inside of a windmill. Some 30 teachers from districts in Curry and Quay counties had that opportunity Friday, first with a day of workshops at Clovis High School and then with a sunset field trip to the turbines in progress at the Grady Wind Farm and those already completed on the Broadview project. A Science,...
CLOVIS — A man and woman charged with assisting the escape effort this summer of three local jail inmates each pleaded guilty last week to charges. Jon Hausmann, 38, pleaded guilty Thursday afternoon to one fourth-degree felony charge of harboring or aiding a felon, through an agreement by which three other felony charges from the summer were dismissed. Hausmann was arrested June 19, when sheriff deputies followed an anonymous tip to a residence near Clovis’ Dennis Chavez par...
CLOVIS - School board members on Tuesday discussed the forthcoming retirement of Superintendent Jody Balch, whose career in education stretches across four decades. "You know when it's time," Balch told the Clovis Municipal School board at their regular meeting. He told The News on Friday that he always intended to serve five years as superintendent when he took the position in July 2014, and aimed to make that a reality with retirement this summer. He said he doesn't have...
PORTALES - Monday in eastern New Mexico brought another of those spectacular sunsets that occasions a motorist to pull over and take pictures or a pedestrian to stop and gape slackjawed. But in Portales that evening it competed with another phenomenon at least as dazzling and more unique: a crowd of some 300, more than half in red shirts, walking through downtown with a marching band and military color guard at the helm. That was the start of programming for the city's Martin...
CLOVIS - It was a full house Saturday morning during the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Breakfast at the Clovis High School cafeteria, and that wasn't lost on the event's keynote speaker. "This is a big kind of space and this is an amazing kind of crowd," Sonia Gipson Rankin said to an audience of hundreds. "I am so impressed with the people of Clovis, gathering where our children gather every day, to talk." Gipson Rankin, an assistant professor at the University of New...
ALBUQUERQUE - A pro-racino Clovis contingent in Albuquerque on Thursday morning for the New Mexico Racing Commission's first regular meeting of the new year oscillated from expectation to dismay and back again to hopefulness. A group some half-dozen strong, among them City Commissioner Helen Casaus, Vision 2020 advocate Gayla Brumfield and Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ernie Kos, drove in Wednesday night for the meeting, anticipating commissioners...
SANTA FE — In an occasionally blistering 27-page opinion filed Thursday, the Supreme Court of New Mexico adopted findings last year from the disciplinary board ordering the indefinite suspension of Portales attorney Eric Dixon’s law license. The court said “Dixon’s conduct was, at best, extremely careless and sloppy” and “became increasingly deceptive” regarding a fictitious plaintiff erroneously named in a federal lawsuit against the Roosevelt County Detention Center. Dixon named a male inmate Jessie Aguilar as one of 10...
CLOVIS — A local school board member charged in May with inappropriately touching a restaurant employee was sentenced Friday to six months unsupervised probation through a plea agreement, in spite of the employee’s protests. Kyle Snider, 47, pleaded no contest to one petty misdemeanor battery charge from when he was alleged to have twice touched a restaurant employee working the concession stand March 24 at Clovis’ Guy Leeder softball complex. Judicial Officer Buddy Hall of Fort Sumner presided in Friday’s hearing in Clovis...
CLOVIS - Victor Apodaca spoke through tears Monday while "begging for mercy" from Judge Drew Tatum in a sentencing hearing on charges from a short-lived jail escape this summer. "I'm sorry for everything that I've put you all through," he said, addressing family members behind him in court before resuming his plea to the judge. "I'm asking for mercy. I've changed my life." Through an agreement signed late last year, Apodaca pleaded guilty to each of his two fourth-degree...
Don Paschke walked both the Great Wall of China and the Greyhound Arena, he braved flooded cobblestone roads in Venice, he made "puddin bars" for his students - all of that incidental to half a century sharing a love of music with eastern New Mexico. When The News reached out last week for remembrances of the late Donald V. Paschke, his former colleagues and students did not miss a beat. Paschke, who passed last month at the age of 89, was remembered in the highest terms: an...
LAS CRUCES — Mark Anthony Baca said he is “beaten, but not defeated” after the courts last year prohibited him from continuing to use the likeness of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in his anti-bullying campaign. U.S. District Judge Judith C. Herrera entered a permanent injunction against Baca and his non-profit “Guardian Anti-Bullying Campaign, Inc.” from “directly or indirectly infringing Viacom’s Ninja Turtles Trademarks or any mark that is confusingly similar thereto in any manner,” according to a final judgment submitte...
PORTALES - If it seemed a little dark Thursday night in Roosevelt County, that's because most of its local stars were together in the Yam Theatre for the Chamber of Commerce's "Portales Goes Hollywood"-themed banquet. The annual program took on a movie theme this year with cinematic trivia at each table, film posters adorning the walls and life-size character cutouts greeting guests at the doors. Special emphasis was placed on those features filmed in Portales or New Mexico....
PORTALES - Almost 18 months since their arrest following the death of a young child in their care, Mary and Sandi Taylor appeared in court with their attorney on Monday. The purpose was for final motion hearings in advance of their joint trial starting by month's end. The mother-daughter duo and former daycare operators were each charged with two first-degree child abuse felonies after leaving two young girls in a car for more than an hour the afternoon of July 25, 2017, in...
CLOVIS — Officials last week investigated multiple early-morning car thefts in northwest Clovis, arresting one while advising the public to take additional precautions in securing their vehicles. Three vehicles within a half-mile of each other were reported stolen Wednesday morning in a period of less than three hours, according to police records. All three of them were recovered, one in flames, according to Clovis Police Capt. Roman Romero. The first theft was a 2005 Dodge Ram truck, reported stolen just after 6 a.m. from t...
CLOVIS — Past offenses enhanced two drug convictions Wednesday for a Clovis woman to a sentence of more than 10 years in the Department of Corrections, according to a news release from the 9th Judicial District Attorney. Kaitlyn Martinez-Arington, 26, was found guilty of possession of methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia, a fourth-degree felony, and petty misdemeanor, respectively. Following a one-day jury trial Judge Matthew Chandler ruled she was an habitual offender from past felony convictions, enhancing her sentence t...
FORT SUMNER — The second of two Motor Vehicle Department employees charged in January with embezzling thousands from customers was sentenced last week to 4 1/2 years probation and a restitution order per a plea agreement. Tianna Gallegos, 25, pleaded guilty Nov. 29 to embezzlement and conspiracy (over $2,500), third and fourth-degree felonies, respectively. 10th Judicial District Judge Albert Mitchell Jr. sentenced her to a total of four years and six months imprisonment, suspended in favor of supervised probation, as well a...
CLOVIS - With contractors on site for its interim pipeline project, it's as good a time as any for the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority to start thinking on a mission statement. That was proposed in Thursday's regular authority board meeting by Administrator Orlando Ortega, who told members a more pronounced public presence for ENMWUA and its long-term Ute Water Project was advisable, especially as the Finished Water 2 project was settling into its early phases on...
CLOVIS — Police last week arrested a woman accused of embezzling more than $55,000 in a 16-month period from a Clovis dairy where she worked as a head bookkeeper. Sunni Castillo, 33, was charged with more than 100 counts of fourth-degree felony forgery, one count of second-degree felony embezzlement and one misdemeanor count of fraud, according to court records. Officials allege Castillo altered bank statements, forged signatures and employee names on checks and fudged accounting records to cover the tracks. Castillo’s attorn...
CLOVIS - Convicted Friday on his 10th impaired driving charge, Randall Pruit now faces up to 10 years in prison. A Curry County jury returned its verdict after a long day of trial but less than an hour of deliberation, finding Pruit guilty of second-degree felony DWI and two petty misdemeanors in connection with a nighttime crash into his neighbor's car on Dec. 31, 2017. Ronna Mares testified Friday morning to hearing "a very loud crash" outside her house shortly after...
CLOVIS - In what prosecutors called a "huge step" and perhaps the last in almost 16 months of adjudication for library shooter Nathaniel Jouett, a judge ordered this week that the juvenile gunman be sentenced as an adult. Jouett, who turns 18 in a few weeks, pleaded guilty in October to almost three dozen felony charges stemming from the Aug. 28, 2017, shooting at the Clovis-Carver Public Library that killed staff members Wanda Walters and Krissie Carter while injuring four...
PORTALES - Denise Burnett has overseen plenty of changes in over three decades serving the Portales Public Library. But there's plenty she expects will stay constant for the community institution. Some of those changes have included an expansion that more than doubled the library's size in 1997, and a Microsoft grant that brought four computers to the location and allowed PPL to be the first to offer internet service to the public. Burnett recalled learning how to use a mouse...
PORTALES — Wind energy came up twice in Tuesday's Roosevelt County Commission meeting — once for the past, and again for the future. In a new business item, commissioners approved the creation of the county's Windmill Museum Steering Committee, as requested by administrator Carol Acosta-Flores. Meanwhile the commission heard from David Essex with an update on the Xcel Energy Sagamore Wind Project . The plan is for some 240 turbines, with an estimated construction start date midway through next year and a construction tim...
