Staff Reports

ALBUQUERQUE – Lance Wilson, 31, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who resides in Shiprock, was sentenced Aug. 29 in federal court in Santa Fe to 60 months in prison for his conviction on an assault charge.

Wilson will be on supervised release for three years after completing his prison sentence.

Wilson was arrested in Jan. 2017, on a criminal complaint charging him with assaulting a Navajo man by striking him in the head with a pair of wire cutters on the Navajo Indian Reservation in San Juan County.

He was subsequently indicted on Jan. 24, 2017. The two-count indictment charged Wilson with assault with intent to commit murder and assault resulting in serious...

Staff Reports

Just after 3 pm on Aug. 28, Metro Dispatch received a report about a deceased person located north of the BNSF tracks adjacent to Elizabeth Street and East Highway 66.

Gallup Police Department officers and detectives responded to the location and conducted an investigation to determine the cause of death.

Identification was difficult due to the state of the body, but positive identification was made Aug. 29, and the next of kin was notified.

The deceased was identified as Thomas Heredia, 34.

On Aug. 20, GPD Officer Douglas Hoffman took a Missing Persons report on Heredia.

Hoffman attempted to, but did not, locate him, and entered Heredia as a Missing Persons into the...

Staff Reports

ALBUQUERQUE – On Aug. 28, U.S. District Judge Judith C. Herrera of the District of New Mexico sentenced Nael Ali, 54, of Albuquerque, for violating the Indian Arts and Craft Act (IACA) by fraudulently selling counterfeit Native American jewelry as Indian-Made.

Judge Herrera sentenced Ali, who previously pled guilty to two felony IACA charges, to six months of imprisonment followed by a year of supervised release. Ali also was ordered to pay $9,048.78 in restitution.

The IACA prohibits the offer or display for sale, or the sale of any good in a manner that falsely suggests that it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian...

Navajo Vice-President Jonathan Nez, who came out on top of all the pre-election polls, had no problem coming in first in the Navajo Nation primary for tribal president Tuesday.




He won more chapters than all of the other 17 candidates combines, getting 14,105 votes, according to the unofficial totals.




Coming in second was former Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., who received 6,947 votes, but the story there was that throughout most of the night, he was fighting to keep that second place as Tom Chee, the tribal council delegate from Shiprock, who was challenging him all night, at times came within 150 votes.

 

Chee came in third place with 6,411 votes.




The tribe's...