Gallup Sun

Clean-up board seeks corporate sponsorship

The efforts to clean up Gallup and keep it clean are year-round, with numerous community events organized to get residents involved.

The Keep Gallup Clean and Beautiful Board discussed a number of clean-up initiatives and collaborations during the Nov. 12 meeting at Octavia Fellin Public Library.

But the stand out item was the discussion about Gallup Walmart, and the company’s seeming absence from KGCB’s efforts to tidy up the town.

Board member Greg Kirk suggested the board approach the Gallup Walmart and ask for help cleaning up the amount of litter in town.

Kirk suggested starting a Walmart campaign where customers would be...

Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Mescalero Apache tribes represented

ALBUQUERQUE, N. M. – New Mexico held its first meeting of the task force to study the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women Nov. 8.  The group will define goals, develop a strategy to understand the extent of the problem in New Mexico and create a final report that meets the requirements of State House Bill 278.

First Lady Phefelia Nez spoke at the meeting. “Throughout Indian Country, we hear far too many stories of families and victims who experience this traumatic epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We need to put a stop to it, and it begins with identifying barriers, collecting and...

Well-known Gallup locals leave community grief-stricken

It was a single vehicle rollover in the early morning hours of Nov. 10 that took the life of Corey Ritchie Joe, who was two days away from celebrating his birthday.

The crash seriously injured the driver, 32-year-old Gallup Independent reporter Maggie Adams.

Adams was traveling westbound on Interstate 40 in her 2006 Mazda when the accident occurred near milepost 102, not far from Acoma Pueblo, at about 2:17 am.

Joe, 25, played Benny Bengal, the mascot for Gallup High for four years. He was a graduate of New Mexico State University, where he majored in social work. He also counseled at Linda Middle school, worked with homeless...

Ivan Mike Largo was the customer from hell.

Employees at Fratelli’s Pizza north of Gallup learned this when he visited the restaurant about 7 pm on Oct. 17 and rang up a bill for $58.82 and then refused to pay for it, leading to a confrontation with the restaurant’s owner and police.

Emily Rohrbough, the restaurant’s owner, told police Largo presented a credit card to pay for the bill. The card was declined three times and instead of coming up with another way to pay, the customer became verbally abusive and called employees racist, saying they would not treat him that way if he was white.

As one employee called police, other workers tried to get the man to go outside so their...