A Gallup woman admitted to smoking fentanyl after police found her with a stolen truck.
On Feb. 11, around 4:08 pm, Gallup Police Officer Daniel Brown was dispatched to St. Joseph’s Soup Kitchen, 450 N. Fifth St., because someone had called the Metro Dispatch saying that two people were sitting in a truck and they were possibly on drugs. The caller said the pair seemed to be arguing.
While he was driving to the soup kitchen, Metro Dispatch told Brown that the National Crime Information Center was reporting the truck as a stolen vehicle.
When Brown arrived at the scene, he found a tan Chevy Silverado pick-up truck. He saw a man standing outside of the truck’s driver side’s door, which was open.
The man appeared to be talking to someone in the driver’s seat. Officers Jarad Albert and Christopher Daves arrived to help Brown. Brown pulled up behind the truck and turned on his patrol lights.
Suddenly, a woman got out of the truck and started walking away. According to his report, Brown told the woman to stop, but the woman just looked at him and kept walking away. Albert was able to detain the woman and led her to his police car.
The man who had been at the scene when Brown arrived agreed to talk to the officers. He explained that when he had gotten to the soup kitchen, he saw a man and a woman arguing in the truck. The woman had been crying and screaming, but the truck’s windows were rolled up so he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
The witness said the other man in the truck ended up leaving, but he didn’t know where he went. He gave the woman some food and tried talking to her.
Brown then went to speak with the woman, who was Caitlin Lucero, 22, from Gallup.
Lucero explained that she had found the truck with its keys left inside it at the TA Truck Stop, 3404 W. Hwy. 66. She said that she put $5 in gas into the truck in order to try and get to the hospital.
According to Lucero, while she was at the gas station, 701 U.S. Hwy. 491, she saw a guy she knew from high school and picked him up. She told Brown that she didn’t know the guy’s name, and that she called him “Spook” in high school. She said she thought he took the truck’s keys when they got to the soup kitchen.
Brown found out that the vehicle had been reported stolen on Feb. 9. He arrested Lucero for receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle and resisting arrest.
While he was searching the vehicle, Albert found a small cloth bag, which had a pipe with a brownish residue inside it. Lucero admitted that she had smoked Fentanyl about an hour before her arrest.
Finally, the truck’s owner arrived at the soup kitchen.
Brown transported Lucero to the Gallup Police Department to get her paperwork processed, and then to the McKinley County Adult Detention Center. Lucero was charged with drug paraphernalia possession in addition to the two previously mentioned charges. Lucero’s preliminary examination was on March 9.
By Molly Ann Howell
Sun Correspondent
