Judge sends APD crash case to trial on vehicular homicide

Casaus ran a red light as he drove west on Paseo del Norte into the intersection of Eagle Ranch Road, T-boning a northbound SUV and killing its passenger in the early morning hours of Feb. 10, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.

Proctor will be live tweeting and filing updates on this page.

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3:35 p.m.

Judge Martinez rules that probable cause exists for prosecutors to take APD Sgt. Adam Casaus to trial.

Casaus must present himself at Metro Detention Center by Friday for booking and fingerprinting. He will be released pending trial.

3:25 p.m.

Data from the “black box” recording device on APD Sgt. Adam Casaus’ police SUV shows that he was accelerating as he struck a vehicle carrying two sisters on Feb. 10, killing that vehicle’s passenger, according to testimony given by investigators during a preliminary hearing in state District Court this afternoon.

The data also show that Casaus had tapped his brake pedal a few seconds — and a few hundred feet — prior to entering the intersection of Paseo del Norte and Eagle Ranch Road NW, investigators testified.

The tap slowed Casaus’ vehicle down by 3 mph — from 65 mph to 62 mph — but based on calculations made by investigators, the veteran APD traffic unit officer had sped back up to 64 or 65 mph by the time he struck the Browder sisters’ vehicle.

Testimony is complete for the day. Casaus did not take the stand, and his attorney, John D’Amato, called no witnesses and presented no evidence.

Stay with ABQJournal.com, as state District Judge Kenneth Martinez may be making a ruling on whether there’s probable cause to prosecute Casaus on a vehicular homicide charge within the next several minutes.

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12:45 p.m.

There was no evidence at the scene of an early morning crash on Feb. 10 that claimed the life of 21-year-old Ashley Browder to indicate that APD Sgt. Adam Casaus used his brakes prior to the collision, according to testimony this morning from the lead investigator in the case.

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy Leonard Armijo, a veteran of hundreds of crash scene investigations, also testified during a preliminary hearing in state District Court that he was unable to verify Casaus’ story that he had been looking for a vehicle that was driving dangerously on westbound Paseo del Norte prior to the crash.

Casaus, according to Armijo’s testimony, said he first observed a “black sedan” with vertical, skinny tail lights and a yellow license plate around Second Street — miles east of the crash site at the intersection of Paseo del Norte and Eagle Ranch Road.

In fact, according to testimony given this morning, Jana Villanueva was stopped at the crash-site intersection, facing westbound, in a vehicle matching that description.

But according to Villanueva’s testimony and Armijo’s investigation, Villanueva had driven onto Paseo del Norte from Coors Boulevard, which is miles west of Second Street.

Casaus would’ve seen Villanueva’s vehicle as he drove through a red light at the intersection and crashed into the Honda CRV carrying Ashley Browder.

Armijo testified that he estimated Casaus’ speed at about 64 mph at the time of the crash. The speed limit on that section of Paseo del Norte is 45 mph.

Lindsay Browder, Ashley’s sister, was driving northbound on Eagle Ranch at about the 40 mph speed limit, according to Armijo’s investigation.

Armijo’s testimony came during a highly unusual court proceeding — preliminary hearings are seldom used in Albuquerque.

The purpose of the hearing is so that a judge — in this case, state District Judge Kenneth Martinez — can determine whether probable cause exists for prosecutors to take Casaus to trial on a vehicular homicide charge.

It’s unclear whether Martinez will make that determination today.

Typically, prosecutors take cases to grand juries for potential indictments after law enforcement agencies charge someone in a criminal complaint — as Armijo did with Casaus last month.

But grand juries presentations are held in secret and, because the case involved a police officer, prosecutors chose to go the preliminary hearing route for transparency’s sake, Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Drebing told the Journal last month.

Today’s hearing is being held in open court.

The courtroom has been packed all morning with reporters, members of the Browder family and their friends, members of Casaus’ family and their friends and others.

No high-ranking members of APD have been in court so far today.

Lindsay Browder also testified this morning, saying her sister had asked for a ride home from a Downtown Albuquerque night club on the night of the crash because she had been drinking.

Ashley Browder promptly fell asleep in her sister’s car, Lindsay Browder testified, adding that she turned off the radio so as not to disturb her older sibling.

According to her testimony, Lindsay Browder drove northbound on Eagle Ranch toward a green light at Paseo del Norte. She said she heard no sirens and never saw Casaus.

“The last thing I remember was going through the green light at the crosswalk, then waking up in the hospital,” Lindsay Browder said. “I had no idea what happened.”

Lindsay Browder was delivered to the witness stand today in a wheelchair. She suffered a broke pelvis and fractures in her back in the crash.

Prosecutors expect to call one more witness after the lunch break: the State Police investigator who reviewed data from the “black box” recorder on Casaus’ police SUV.

It’s unclear whether Casaus will testify.
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11 a.m.

The two people who witnessed the Feb. 10 broadside collision between APD Sgt. Adam Casaus’ police SUV and a smaller, Honda SUV carrying sisters Ashley and Lindsay Browder testified this morning during a preliminary hearing in state District Court.

The hearing concerns whether Casaus should face vehicular homicide charges as recommended by the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, whose investigators looked into the circumstances of the crash.

Both witnesses testified that Casaus never hit his brakes as he drove westbound along Paseo del Norte into the intersection at Eagle Ranch Road against a red light.

Both also testified that Casaus had his emergency police lights on, but not his sirens. Neither witness saw any other vehicles driving in the area, according to their testimony.

Casaus’ statements to investigators have been that he was looking for or pursuing a possible drunken driver in the area when he struck the Browders’ vehicle, which entered the intersection northbound on Eagle Ranch on a green light.

APD dispatch records obtained by the Journal after the crash show that Casaus never called in the vehicle he was looking for, which would have been required by department policy.

Ashley Browder, who had called her sister for a ride home from a night club on the night of the crash, was killed.

Lindsay Browder suffered a broken pelvis and is in the courtroom this morning in a wheelchair. She is expected to testify.