Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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A district court judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order preventing the New Mexico Public Education Department from enforcing its 180-day school rule, court records show. The PED’s new rule was to be implemented with the 2024-2025 school year. The order issued by Judge Dustin K. Hunter of Roswell requires the PED to “show cause” at a hearing on May 13 as to why the order should not continue “as a preliminary injunction pending final determination” of the case. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs – New Mexico School Superintend...
The New Mexico Department of Health announced on Friday, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated guidance, that vaccinated individuals will no longer be required to wear masks in indoor or outdoor settings. Individuals who are not yet fully vaccinated still are required under public health orders to wear masks in public settings. Individuals are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after either their second dose of either Pfizer or Moderna or their lone dose of Johnson & Johnson. It wasn't immediately c...
SANTA FE -- The New Mexico Public Education Department and Department of Health announced Monday a goal to reach full school re-entry by April 5, with the caveat that all school staff members will be offered a COVID-19 vaccine before March ends. “We’re going back to school,” Public Education Secretary Ryan Stewart said. “The time has come to get back to the gold-standard in education, which is students and teachers together in classrooms. Our message to New Mexico public schools is that you can and should move as quickly as possible to get eve...
PORTALES — A former Roosevelt County sheriff’s deputy was convicted last week of a petty misdemeanor for possession of stolen property. Chris McCasland, 34, was found guilty by District Judge Drew Tatum during a two-hour morning bench trial. Tatum took about 20 minutes to reach his decision. Sentencing will be set at a later date. McCasland faces up to six months in jail and a $500 fine. The charges arose from allegations McCasland was involved in 2014 burglaries in Angel Fire while he worked for its police department. He was indicted by a Roo...
SANTA FE — The state will relax many of its public health restrictions on Wednesday, but details of a county-based COVID-19 risk system show reopening will be a slow process. The office of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced its first phase of reopening following a two-week period that closed non-essential business and severely limited the capacity for businesses that were open. Beginning Wednesday, counties will enter one of three zones for COVID-19 risk levels. Green, yellow and red levels depend on whether a county has reached gating crite...
New Mexico will begin a two-week "shelter in place" status Monday and take a county-based approach for reopening against worsening COVID-19 infection rates. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the changes during a Friday news conference. The new public health order will require "non-essential businesses" to close and "essential businesses" to reduce operations and in-person workforce to the greatest extent possible. “You should stay at home,” Lujan Grisham said, “except for only the most essential trips for health, safety and welfa...
FORT SUMNER — A Fort Sumner woman wanted on allegations she killed her grandfather was captured Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida, according to the New Mexico State Police. Candy Jo Webb, 27, was taken into custody without incident by U.S. marshals and is in a Florida detention facility awaiting extradition to New Mexico. Webb faces charges of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of her grandfather, A.J. Harden, whose body was found in an abandoned tool chest in Fort Sumner. According to an Oct. 28 arrest warrant, W...
A revised public health order, issued Thursday by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and effective Friday, includes some relaxations of the requirement for a 14-day quarantine when arriving to New Mexico from other states. Restrictions still in place under the health order only slightly relax quarantine requirements on travel from border states Texas and Arizona. According to the order, individuals arriving from a state with a 5% test positivity rate or greater or a new coronavirus case rate of 80 per million residents must separate from others in a...
The New Mexico Public Education Department has released guidance for the upcoming school year, including a regional approach and a requirement for social distancing and face coverings for all students and staff. A message from Education Secretary Ryan Stewart notes while state measures that included a three-week closure of schools followed by a transition to online instruction helped flatten the curve early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there remains “profound uncertainty” about the pandemic’s impact on the 2020-21 school year. “This will not be ea...
[Listen - .MP3] CLOVIS — The calls started to come in just before 4:13 p.m. on Aug. 28. In about seven minutes, 911 dispatchers took nine reports of an active shooter at the Clovis-Carver Public Library. Clovis police on Friday released the 911 calls from the violence that left two people dead, four injured and a 16-year-old high school student in custody. The audio includes many callers who appear out of breath, outside the building and seeking safety. Other calls came from st...
CLOVIS — The film “Hell or High Water,” filmed in Clovis, Portales and Tucumcari, may have walked away empty-handed during the Oscars on Sunday. But its award season prominence brings a promising future for films shot in eastern New Mexico, according to Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce Film Liaison Nick Mondragon. “I went into the Oscars thinking that we didn’t have a good chance of winning,” said Mondragon. “Especially the way things went with the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) awards and the Golden Globes.” The film, directed by Dav...