A former Village of Cuba police officer was sentenced Wednesday to 26 years in prison after pleading guilty in a 2021 drunken-driving crash that killed two people.
Brandon Patrick Roybal-Barber, 30, pleaded guilty in December to two counts of vehicular homicide while intoxicated in a wrong-way crash on Interstate 25 north of Albuquerque, court records show.
A former New Mexico National Guard captain, Roybal-Barber also pleaded guilty in 2nd Judicial District Court to great bodily harm by vehicle and a misdemeanor charge of having an open container.
The May 1, 2021, fatal crash on I-25, just north of the Tramway exit, killed Diego Arellano, 21, and Alfredo Escaname-Hernandez, 50. It also severely injured Fernando Arellano, 21.
Barber was driving a Ford F-150 pickup north in the southbound lanes of I-25 around 2 a.m. when he collided head-on with a GMC Yukon carrying the three men, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies said in a criminal complaint.
Deputies also found a partially consumed bottle of liquor on the floor of Roybal-Barber’s pickup.
At the time of the crash, Roybal-Barber had been with the New Mexico National Guard for about 10 years, a Guard spokesman said at the time.
Roybal-Barber was arrested for DWI in 2016 after he was found sleeping behind the wheel of a truck in traffic on Unser near Central, court records show.
In that case, Roybal-Barber pleaded guilty to DWI and was sentenced to complete the DWI First Offender Program.
