Man facing new charge in fatal hit-and-run of nurse outside UNMH - Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
The man accused of hitting and killing a University of New Mexico Hospital nurse was rearrested Tuesday on a charge of vehicular homicide.
The new charge was filed against Brian Boyce, 43, in the Oct. 9 death of 28-year-old Alec Montoya. He was previously charged with knowingly leaving the scene of a crash that resulted in death.
A 2nd Judicial District grand jury indicted Boyce on additional charges after further investigation by police found that there was an open container of alcohol inside his vehicle, according to Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson.
Boyce was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Wednesday.
Boyce’s attorney did not respond to calls for comment.
Police were sent to Stanford and Lomas NE around 6:45 p.m. Oct. 9 after a caller reported that a person had been struck by a car, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Officers arrived and found Montoya lying in the street. He died at the scene.
UNM police obtained security camera footage that showed Boyce’s eastbound vehicle “traveling at a high rate of speed” on Lomas and hitting Montoya, the complaint states. Boyce could be seen in the footage stopping and getting out of the vehicle.
Boyce requested to be taken to a hospital because there was glass in his eye, according to the complaint. He left shortly after on foot.
Police caught up with Boyce, who was eventually booked into jail and released on his own recognizance, according to online court records.
New Mexico officials, Mora residents say feds should respond to groundwater contamination - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
As fear ripples across the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire burn scar about newly discovered toxic metals in Mora County groundwater, elected officials and residents are increasingly wondering whether a federal office overseeing a multi-billion-dollar wildfire compensation fund will step in to help.
On Friday, the New Mexico Department of Health issued an alert to Mora County residents telling them to test their private wells following the discovery that high levels of dangerous metals like antinomy, arsenic and uranium in the groundwater exceeded federal safe drinking water limits. In the meantime, health officials recommended those with private wells drink bottled water.
NMDOH also noted the metals are found in suppressant materials used to fight wildfires like Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire that burned through a 534-square-mile area in 2022, including much of Mora County.
But even though state officials and New Mexico Democratic U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández — as well as the independent geologist who discovered the elevated levels — are pointing to the wildfire as the likely culprit for the contamination, whether federal officials will release some of a huge compensation fund to help test private wells or provide water filters is an open question, they told Source New Mexico this week.
Leger Fernández, in an interview with Source New Mexico on Tuesday, called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to quickly review evidence presented about the role of fire suppressants in causing the contamination. The agency is overseeing a claims office with a $5.45 billion fund Congress created to compensate victims of the fire, which the Forest Service accidentally ignited in botched prescribed burns in early 2022.
“If [the metals] are a consequence of the fire, it is my belief that they should be covered by the Hermits Peak money that I secured for these claims,” she said. “And we need to make sure that FEMA reads the report to understand that this is not naturally occurring contamination and that they are heavy metals that come from the fire suppression efforts.”
Dianne Segura, a FEMA spokesperson, told Source New Mexico on Wednesday the agency was working on a response to Source’s questions about the contamination. Source will update this story with the agency’s response when it’s received.
According to attendees, FEMA officials didn’t attend a packed, emergency meeting Wednesday morning at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Mora, where state and local officials described the contamination and their options for next steps. Segura told Source on Tuesday that the agency had not received a “formal invitation” to the meeting and didn’t know whether agency officials would attend.
At the meeting Wednesday, state Environment Department officials collected names of people seeking private well tests. They also described results from recent tests showing the metals were not at elevated levels in the public drinking water system.
Recent delays on ‘cascading events’
The latest environmental crisis in Mora County resurfaced frustration with FEMA’s Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Claims Office, which has so far paid out about $3.24 billion of the fund, according to an update the office posted Tuesday on Facebook.
Much of the recent frustration centers on how the office handles claims from fire victims who suffered damage from post-fire flooding and debris flows, which the agency refers to as “cascading events” caused by the wildfire.
Even though federal officials committed to covering claims for post-fire flooding, victims have told Source in recent weeks that the office has either not approved their requests to reopen their claims for compensation or has not responded.
In early November, Leger Fernández and other members of the New Mexico congressional delegation criticized the agency in a letter for failing to keep its promise to honor “cascading event” claims.
State and local officials told Source this week that they believe the newly discovered contamination constitutes another “cascading event” that the funds should cover. They are calling on the claims office to pay for private well tests and water filters.
Leger Fernández told Source on Tuesday that the agency had not responded to the delegation’s recent letter, and that she’s concerned FEMA will continue to ignore requests for reopened claims for the metal contamination.
“We need to use this process to address this as a ‘cascading event’ if it is a consequence of the fire,” she said. “And it looks like it is.”
Mora County Commissioner Veronica Serna told Source she tried to confront FEMA officials on Monday in-person at the claims office headquarters in Santa Fe, but was unable to find the office’s director, and left even more frustrated, she said.
She says she’s also sent about a dozen letters to FEMA in recent weeks from different fire victims who have not received compensation for “cascading events.” That doesn’t bode well for the agency’s response to the contamination, she said.
“I’m not sure what’s going on with this claims office, and I really feel bad for people,” she said.
‘I’d rather have a burned mountain’
Geologist Kate Zeigler, who runs an independent geologic consulting firm, has been testing private wells in Mora County each summer since 2023, and found no concerning levels of contaminants in 2023 and 2024, she said. But the results of her latest round of testing from this summer were “so concerning,” she told Source in an email, that she quickly summed up findings into a report that she sent to state agencies, which then issued the alert Friday.
Zeigler’s four-page report dated Oct. 4 said tests of 55 private wells in the summer of 2025 detected a sudden increase in a range of metals beyond levels the Environmental Protection Agency deems safe for human consumption.
The report also cited a 2024 study of California watersheds that linked increased heavy metal levels to fire suppression materials used in fires across the West between 2009 and 2021. The study concludes that fire suppressants contributed approximately 380,000 kilograms of toxic metals to the environment in that period.
Zeigler elaborated on her findings during the Wednesday meeting, showing maps of 55 well sites where tests detected elevated levels of antimony, arsenic, manganese, cadmium and uranium, a subset of which were beyond EPA limits.
The news of the contamination has been deeply distressing to Paula Garcia, a lifelong Mora-area resident who also directs the New Mexico Acequia Association, she said at the meeting Wednesday. She called on the Forest Service to share with the public details of how much fire suppression it dumped on mountainsides to fight the blaze, and she fears the ensuing contamination will imperil drinking water for years to come.
“I’d rather have a burned mountain,” she said, “than poisoned water.”
Rural NM prosecutors ask state for help with high-mileage cars, internet, hiring - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
Each of New Mexico’s district attorneys on Wednesday asked state lawmakers during ongoing Legislative Finance Committee hearings to increase their funding in the upcoming legislative session. Most every prosecutor’s office asked for more money to hire attorneys and support staff, but DAs in New Mexico’s most rural areas had a unique set of requests.
In the Eighth Judicial District, which includes Taos, Colfax and Union counties, prosecuting attorneys rely on a high-mileage fleet of cars to cover courthouse visits that require driving as much as 140 to 266 miles round-trip. In the Fifth Judicial District, which includes Roswell, attorneys experience disruptions to internet speeds and reliability during electronic discovery processes. And across the state, IT services and computers are “at end-of-life” and need a major overhaul, the president of the New Mexico Administrative Office of the District Attorneys said.
Marcus Montoya, district attorney for the Eighth Judicial District and president of the New Mexico District Attorneys’ Association, said his office currently has 10 vehicles, two of which have clocked more than 100,000 miles. The odometer on his office’s 2005 Toyota Matrix recently rolled over to 142,282 miles, he said, noting that Kelley Blue Book assigns that vehicle an average lifespan of 147,428 miles.
His staff attorneys need the vehicles to attend court hearings, serve subpoenas and attend meetings throughout the vast district, Montoya said. Extreme weather isn’t uncommon in his part of the state, where roads and highways stretch through craggy, mountainous terrain.
“We are the Dutch boy plugging the dam with our finger,” Montoya said.
He asked state lawmakers to increase his office’s base budget by about 4.4%, which would include $75,000 to upgrade its vehicle fleet. In all, his office requested about $6 million. Montoya’s office isn’t alone — the 12th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which includes Alamogordo, also requested about $71,000 to replace vehicles with 150,000 miles.
Dianna Luce, DA for the Fifth Judicial District, told state lawmakers that her office has issues with internet speeds and said that convincing University of New Mexico law graduates to move to Chaves County is a tough proposition. As of Wednesday, she said her office has seven unfilled staff attorney positions.
“It is extremely difficult to hire attorneys,” she said. “We primarily hire from outside the state.”
Albuquerque’s Verus Research secures $12.7M in Navy contracts for weapons tech - Hannah Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
An Albuquerque-based defense contractor acquired earlier this year, but that still maintains a presence in the city, has been awarded two multimillion-dollar contracts this month by the U.S. Navy.
Verus Research, now part of Radiance Technologies, secured contracts with the military branch for $6.7 million and $6 million to develop weapons defense systems, Verus CEO Grady Patterson said.
That includes the Ship Electromagnetic Acquisition System and the Adaptive Radio Frequency Chamber and Hardware, the former of which is for two and a half years and will see the company build a “suite of sensors” that will then analyze simulated pulses on ships to dictate how those vessels will react to the environment, Patterson said.
Verus is not building a ship or the simulator, he added, only the instrument that will measure the effects of electromagnetic energy hitting them. Patterson said electromagnetic pulses can be generated from devices, like what was used to cause the citywide blackout in the film “Ocean’s Eleven,” or by nuclear explosions.
“The Navy has a need to understand how its ships will survive an electromagnetic pulse,” Patterson said. “How do we know what our naval vessels will do in that environment?”
The $6 million award, which spans four years, will implement Verus’ Adaptive Radio Frequency Chamber and Hardware technology — basically, a sensor sent into the air that measures radio frequencies — within Navy operations on testing targets or actual threats. The company, founded in 2014, will examine how it can add these sensors onto items like drones to get a sense of what “actually gets to” what is being aimed at, Patterson said.
For example, if someone is shooting bullets at a large bucket in the air, Patterson said the Navy wants to understand how many bullets made it into the bucket. Similarly, Verus would do the same test from different directions and speeds.
“You want to do all these different testing elements to understand what scenarios might be effective or what scenarios might not be effective,” Patterson said. “What we’re doing is building radio frequency hardware that allows us to better understand the engagement.”
Both contracts are all about “being proactive,” Patterson said. In dangerous situations, like weaponized fighting or inclement weather, it’s important for services like the Navy to be prepared for anything.
Patterson said the awards show that, despite being acquired, Verus is still “here in Albuquerque.”
“These are just two examples of how we’re continuing to try to bring new technology, business and jobs to New Mexico,” Patterson said. “Nothing’s changed. We’re still doing what we’ve been doing.”