Police release footage of chase

A high-speed police chase that went through the heart of Tucumcari last month would have been ordered terminated by the county sheriff if the suspects' car had turned onto a residential street.

However, the chase continued on a north-south artery through town and ended when the suspects' stolen vehicle crashed upside-down onto the lawn of a north-side residence. A two-hour standoff ensued when one of the suspects in the flipped car reportedly shot at officers approaching to give aid. The two were taken into custody without incident after negotiations prompted them to surrender.

The possibility of an aborted chase was one of several facts Quay County Sheriff Russell Shafer relayed Thursday while watching 3 1/2 minutes of dashcam footage from one of his deputy's squad cars during the May 14 chase. The Quay County Sun obtained the footage last week through an open-records request to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, which took over the investigation of the case. The footage can be viewed at youtu.be/qk7ghVWf7go.

The suspects, Scott Andrew Sherbondy, 36, and Brandy Campbell, both of Colorado Springs, Colorado, remained in the Quay County Detention Center on felony charges, including aggravated assault upon a peace officer with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, aggravated fleeing a law-enforcement officer and shooting at or from a motor vehicle and possession of a firearm by a felon. Both had been wanted by Colorado authorities for parole violations.

Shafer said Quay County deputies were told to be on the lookout for Sherbondy and Campbell on Interstate 40 in eastern Quay County. They initially believed the suspects were in a white Volkswagen Passat stolen from Colorado; they instead were in a white Volvo S60.

Deputy Christopher Valdez spotted the Volvo going east on I-40 at a normal speed, Shafer said. Valdez tried to get a check on the license plates but couldn't get any data. Though the car wasn't a VW, it was a white vehicle with Colorado plates with a man and a woman driver inside. When Valdez activated his warning lights to get the vehicle to pull over about mile marker 339 east of Tucumcari, it instead sped up, and the chase was on.

Shafer said Valdez's dashcam automatically activated when his squad car's speed reached 110 miles per hour. No top speed was known for the Volvo, but Valdez's pursuing car reached a top speed of 124 mph on I-40, according to real-time data on the video footage.

The footage shows the car continuing at well over 100 mph around Tucumcari on the interstate. Near the First Street exit, it appeared the Volvo would continue in a westward direction, then it suddenly veered to the right to access the off-ramp.

The chase continued north on First Street, reaching a top speed of 95 mph. At one point in the footage, it appeared the Volvo was about the make a left turn onto Nobles Avenue. But the vehicle again veered right suddenly to stay on First.

"If they had made a left turn into a residential area, I would have called a termination (of the chase)," Shafer said. "It was escalating."

The sheriff explained such situations often are at the discretion of deputies, but chases into densely populated areas can lead to more dangerous situations to residents and law enforcement.

Shafer later said if the Volvo had turned east onto Main Street, he also would have called off the chase because of the large number of residences in that area.

When the Volvo veered to stay on First Street, Valdez's squad car moments later inadvertently tapped its back bumper. Shafer said that was an effect of the Volvo's quicker acceleration than Valdez's 2016 Ford Interceptor; the deputy was motivated to keep up with the Volvo's jackrabbit starts.

"The top speed was probably 120 in that Volvo," Shafer said. "The Interceptor's is a little more. But once (the Volvo) hit the brakes and punched it, they gained ground."

Footage shows the Volvo running red lights at Tucumcari Boulevard – including veering into a turn lane to pass vehicles stopped in both northbound lanes – and Main Street. North of Tucumcari Boulevard, it zipped past a pedestrian who apparently had just crossed the roadway.

Police cars were positioned on the west side of both intersections to stop traffic in those directions.

"We were working on ways to surround the city on the roads leaving down, but we had more roads than we had deputies," Shafer said.

The Volvo continued driving at a high speed on the curving Second Street overpass and managed to maintain control, impressing Shafer.

"How it didn't wreck on that curve, I don't know," Shafer said. "That's a Volvo; it makes me think I want to buy one, too."

Continuing north onto Second Street, the Volvo slowed and veered into a southbound lane. At Maple Avenue, Valdez's squad car crashed into the back of the vehicle as it began a left turn, causing it to careen and flip into a residential yard.

Citing the Volvo driver's previous jackrabbit starts and Valdez's desire to end the chase, Shafer said whether the collision was accidental or on purpose was about "50/50."

The crash's impact knocked a hole in the squad car's transmission cooling system, causing about $5,300 in damage. He estimated repairs will be finished by a local shop in late July. Shafer said he will request court-ordered restitution from the suspects, who remain jailed in the Quay County Detention Center.

Shafer said the dashcam inexplicably shut itself off seconds after the collision.

"It went off, and I can't figure out why," he said. "No one turned it off. I couldn't get it to come back on until I reset everything."

The footage also contained no sound because what Shafer summarized as "operator error."

An Albuquerque television station recently obtained some footage from officers' body cameras at the scene. In one excerpt, a handcuffed Campbell and Sherbondy are seen sharing a long kiss before they being escorted to awaiting squad cars. That moment contradicted Campbell's later statement to police, claiming she was forced to transport Sherbondy "under duress because he told her he would shoot her."

Citing footage time stamps, Shafer said the chase lasted 118 seconds in Tucumcari, which didn't give officers much time to react. Estimating the time from when the Volvo entered First Street to 2.4 miles later when it crashed, the vehicle averaged about 73 mph.

Shafer also noted his deputies seldom are involved in chases.

"I've prepared them as best as we could," he said. "We've talked about it; we've gone through the scenarios of something like this happening. But the actual doing it is not practiced.

"What we've learned from this is be prepared for anything because anything can happen. And when it happens, it happens very rapidly."