Veterans Memorial Complex at Fort Canyon renamed Joe Vargas Veterans Memorial Complex

Joe Vargas served the Gallup community as the Parks Director from November 1963 to December 2000. Now, 21 years after his last day of work and two years after his death on March 29, 2020, he is being honored in an extraordinary way.

During the March 8 city council meeting, the current Parks Director, Vincent Alonzo, came to the council to speak about Vargas and to recommend that the Veterans Memorial Complex at Ford Canyon be renamed the Joe Vargas Veterans Memorial Complex.

“Ford Canyon was Joe’s baby,” Alonzo said. “He was proud of Ford Canyon. To me, the park system is all because of Joe...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.E – A federal jury on March 10 returned a guilty verdict on Brian Tony, 50, of Gallup. The jury found Tony guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

Tony, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, was arrested on June 3, 2016, on a criminal complaint charging him with killing a man by stabbing him in the head and neck and hitting him with a hammer. Tony killed the victim on the Navajo Nation in McKinley County on May 9, 2016.  At the time, Tony was on supervised release for a prior conviction on a federal assault charge.

Tony, who was accompanied by his brother and his girlfriend, drove to a residence in Gallup and picked up the victim and the victim’s friend.  While at...

Convicted of sexual abuse of a minor

ALBUQERQUE, N.M. – Bryan Bull, 40, of Shiprock, N.M., and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, was sentenced on March 15 in federal court to 14 years in prison for aggravated sexual abuse of a minor in Indian Country.

Bull pleaded guilty on Aug. 30, 2021. According to the plea agreement and other court records, on June 3, 2019, Bull and Jeremiah Elijah Jim, 32, of Teec Nos Pos, Ariz., and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, used intimidation and force on then 14-year-old John Doe and sexually abused him.

The abuse took place in Shiprock on the Navajo Nation.

Upon his release from prison, Bull will be subject to five years of supervised...

A Zuni man robbed another man and then threatened him with a hatchet.

On March 2, Gallup Police Officer Darius Johnson was dispatched to Carquest, 1012 W. Maloney Ave., where he met up with a man who said a young couple, a man and a woman, had stolen $400 from him.

The victim explained that the couple approached him near the intersection of  West Aztec Avenue and Dean Street. The man began to fight with the victim, and that’s when he took his wallet from his pants pocket.

The man explained that he tried to chase after his assailant. He caught up to them, and that’s when the man, later identified as Alexander Quam, 18, from Zuni, N.M., swung a hatchet at him. The victim backed...