Camera footage in fatal shooting of State Police officer detailed in court

ALBUQUERQUE -- The body camera worn on the chest of New Mexico State Police Officer Justin Hare the early morning of March 15 captured the image of a stranded motorist on Interstate 40 who wanted a lift into town.

The NMSP-issued device recorded the sound of the first gunshot, causing the 35-year-old Hare to slump over in his patrol vehicle, an FBI agent testified Tuesday in federal court. The video footage showed the assailant come around to the driver’s side, “briefly pausing as a semi-truck passed by,” and then shooting the officer two more times, Agent Bryan Acee testified about his review of the footage.

The camera was still running as the shooter got into the State Police unit and drove about seven miles west on the interstate, dumping Hare by the side of the road.

Hare’s body camera was pointed at the sky when the shooter is seen looking down “over him,” Acee testified. The shooter looked back down again at the officer, then got into Hare’s patrol vehicle and drove away.

Officers who found Hare attempted to “save his life,” Acee testified. But he said Hare ultimately “succumbed to the gunshot wounds.”

The video footage helped lead to the March 17 capture in Albuquerque of a Marion, S.C., man who had been released from prison less than four months earlier, authorities have said. Jaremy Alexander Smith was released in December after serving a 12-year prison sentence for attempted armed robbery and hostage taking by an inmate.

The testimony Tuesday, elicited during a somber preliminary hearing in U.S. Magistrate Court in Albuquerque, was enough for U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar to find probable cause to hold the 33-year-old Smith for trial on federal charges of carjacking resulting in death and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Smith will remain in federal custody pending trial.

Smith, his left arm in a sling, asked to be partially unshackled so he could take notes at the defense table. Hare’s parents, Jim and Terry Hare, watched from the second row of the federal courtroom.

Smith’s federal public defender, Devon Fooks, asked about the evidence linking his client to the shooting, noting that a 9 mm pistol authorities found on Smith was “inoperable” when he was shot several times by Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies trying to take him into custody on Albuquerque’s West Side. Fooks also wanted copies of Hare’s video footage and asked about fingerprints that might have been found in a BMW.

But assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Mysliwiec said the defense wasn’t entitled to that discovery evidence during Tuesday’s hearing, and the judge agreed.

Smith is alleged to have been driving a white BMW sedan owned by a Marion, S.C., paramedic the morning of Hare’s death. The paramedic, Phonesia Machado-Fore, had been reported missing and was found shot in the head on March 15 in Lake View, S.C. Authorities say the BMW was the same vehicle that was stopped on Interstate 40 west of Tucumcari the morning Hare was dispatched to help a disabled motorist.

The video camera footage showed that Hare pulled up about a car’s length behind the BMW, which had a flat tire, Acee said. A man identified as Smith walked up to the passenger side window of Hare’s vehicle and the officer offered to drive him to town. Smith agreed. But then Hare asked him to step in front of the police vehicle.

That’s when “the defendant shot Officer Hare,” Acee testified.

Hare was a six-year veteran of the State Police.