After a brief chase on Interstate 40 followed by a SWAT standoff at a West Side intersection Monday morning, Albuquerque Police Department officers arrested a woman who they said had stolen a truck at gunpoint from a driver in the parking lot of a Dion’s pizza restaurant.
Roberta Marie Chavez, 45, is charged with robbery with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, eluding or evading a police officer and concealing identity. She was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. It’s unclear who her attorney will be.
Around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday officers were called to the Dion’s on Coors, just north of Central, for reports of a carjacking. The caller told dispatch that a woman with black hair had “brandished a handgun,” stole their 2011 Toyota Tacoma and fled the scene.
A sergeant spotted the truck nearby traveling west on Interstate 40, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.
Officers chased the truck to the area near Route 66 Casino however “due to lack of radio communications” the pursuit was called off, according to the complaint.
However, the truck’s owner told police that her AirPods were still in the truck and could be tracked with her iPhone. Around 10 p.m. she told them that the AirPods were at a Speedway gas station on Coors and Quail NW.
At the same time another woman called in to say that a woman in a Toyota Tacoma — Chavez — was trying to hit her vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, near the gas station.
Officers went to the Speedway and the Tacoma fled — running a stop sign — until it lost control and crashed into a light pole nearby at Quail and 57th NW, according to the complaint.
Chavez refused to come out of the truck and around 3:30 a.m. the SWAT team was called to the scene.
She was taken into custody around 4:55 a.m.
Meanwhile, officers had interviewed a man and woman in the Jeep Cherokee who said Chavez had told them she was a “deputy with an unknown department” and demanded the man get in her truck.
When he refused to do so, they said Chavez accelerated toward him and struck him in the leg.
“The male was able to retreat back to his vehicle without any further injury and after doing so they fled from the gas station in a western direction,” an officer wrote in the complaint. “The female in the white Tacoma followed and struck their vehicle with hers. The male and his female acquaintance were able to elude the female in the white Tacoma and call for police.”
