Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
A Tucumcari teen who died in a Jeep accident last month at Five Mile Park was hanging out the vehicle’s window and wasn’t belted into his passenger-side seat when the crash occurred.
The driver had been making tight circles, known as doing doughnuts or drifting, when the vehicle overturned onto its side.
Those details were revealed in a recently completed and partially redacted Tucumcari Police Department report compiled by Detective Reyes Gonzales, which the Quay County Sun obtained Friday through an open-records request.
Interim police chief Patricia Lopez said some names in the report were redacted because they are juveniles.
Previous police chief Pete Rivera said the accident involved four juveniles. Coaches and administrators from Tucumcari Public Schools said identified them as members of the high school boys basketball team.
Jayden Gloms, 15, died in the Jan. 24 accident at a shooting range at the west-side park. His funeral, attended by hundreds, was held about 10 days later at Rattler Gymnasium.
Jayden, a freshman at TPS, was a member of the football team and junior varsity basketball team.
District Attorney Timothy Rose said Friday he also received the 10-page investigative report from the police department.
“The report would need to first be sent to the Juvenile probation office who would conduct a meeting with the boys and their parents,” Rose wrote in an email.
“The case would then be sent formally to my office with recommendations made by JPPO as to whether petition(s) should be filed. I’ll make a final determination at that time.”
The report states authorities first were notified at 4:43 p.m. Jan. 24 about an accident, with one person bleeding from the nose.
They found a 2002 Jeep laying on its passenger side, with three juveniles walking around the vehicle and one person lying on his back.
According to one officer’s narrative, one boy “was screaming and crying for the loss of his friend.”
First responders and medics checked the victim for a pulse or signs of life, including using a machine that measures cardiac rhythms, but found none.
One juvenile said his colleagues had taken turns “drifting,” or making tight turns, with the Jeep at the shooting range.
“He told me he did about two and they hit a bump and the vehicle flipped,” the report stated.
Another juvenile stated: “We came out here in my friends car and we were drifting and my other friend decided to drive and do it. My friend (redacted) was setting outside of the window and all recording it. Half of his body was inside and half of his body was outside recording drifts. My friend hit it to hard and the car flipped and it landed on top of him.”
One juvenile had asked one of the drivers to slow down while drifting shortly before the accident.
Another of the juveniles said the victim had been sitting in the passenger side seat with his head out the window “recording” with a phone.
He said the victim wasn’t wearing a seatbelt before the accident.
Two boys pushed the overturned vehicle, pulled out the victim from under the Jeep and began chest compressions.
Police later obtained a search warrant to collect a cellphone and other items from the vehicle.