Two New Mexico Policemen Fatally Shot
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) -- Two Albuquerque police officers were shot to death after going to pick up a man whose doctor requested a mental health evaluation for him.
Police Chief Ray Schultz, in an early morning news conference Friday, announced the deaths in ''one of the saddest days in the history of the Albuquerque Police Department.''
The names of the officers, whom Schultz called ''these two heroes,'' were not immediately released.
Police arrested a man early Friday morning, but also did not release his name. Before he was picked up, police said they were looking for a man in camouflage pants, a black jacket and glasses and riding a black motorcycle.
The two officers were killed after they arrived at an address near downtown about 10 p.m. Thursday after a doctor notified police the man was having mental health problems, department spokesman John Walsh said.
The officers were taken to University of New Mexico Hospital, where they died, Walsh said.
The chief said both men were veterans with 20 years' experience.
''Members of the Albuquerque Police Department and the Albuquerque community have suffered a tremendous loss,'' he said.
Talking to their families was ''the toughest thing I've ever had to do,'' Schultz said, his voice breaking.
''We're grieving,'' he said. ''We're all grieving.''
The chief asked residents who saw officers to give them a wave or a smile. A young man, without a word, left a single red rose Friday on the windshield of a police cruiser blocking the street where the shootings occurred, television station KOAT reported.
Gov. Bill Richardson ordered flags to half staff in the state through Saturday.
Maren Dey, who lives near the shooting scene, said she was awake when the shots began. ''To me, it seemed like a gunfight,'' she said.
''It just seemed like it was people shooting back and forth,'' she said. ''It got really intense really fast.''
She went out to the porch a while later to find police everywhere.
''They were lined up in the streets and driving in the alleys,'' she said. ''It was more police then I've seen for a long time.''
She called her sister Nicole Dey as she was getting off work, and Nicole advised her to hide in the basement until she got home.
''The fear was pretty thick,'' Nicole Dey said. ''We stopped at a 7-Eleven after and there were some officers who couldn't even speak.''
Zachary Shank, who lives on the corner where the confrontation occurred, said he heard shots and ran to the front of his house, where he saw an officer get shot.
''He doubled over and stumbled out of the street,'' Shank told The Albuquerque Tribune.
Shank called 911, then returned to the front of the house in time to see a motorcyclist speed by.
A man making a pizza delivery at the time also heard the shots.
''I heard two exchanges. ... The first was eight or nine shots, really fast, like boom, boom, boom, then a short pause and like three or four more shots,'' Shawn Spruce told the Albuquerque Journal.
The last shooting involving Albuquerque police occurred in March, when two officers were wounded in a gun battle after a traffic stop in downtown Albuquerque. Officers John Garcia, 35, and Josh Otzenberger, 25, were each shot twice. The man police said shot them, Scott McMyne, 25, was killed in the shootout.
In 2003, Sgt. Carol Oleksak was shot in the head by a mentally ill man who wrested her gun away while she was on foot patrol. The man, Duc Minh Pham, continued walking, brandishing the gun, until other officers shot him to death.
Oleksak returned to work after months of rehabilitation.