The Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that charges won’t be filed against two New Mexico State Police officers who shot and injured a woman two years ago.
New Mexico State Police officers Janice Madrid and Richard Williamson shot and injured Roxanne Torres in July 2014 after Torres drove a vehicle toward Madrid and other officers, according to documents about the shooting.
Madrid and Williamson were at an apartment on the 6100 block of Harper NE to try to arrest a different woman believed to be staying there.
When officers approached a vehicle they said that Torres drove directly at Madrid, who opened fire along with Williamson.
“I was waiting for the impact,” Madrid said in her interview with detectives, according to a recording. “I began to fire at the driver to stop that vehicle. I didn’t believe that I was going home. I was waiting for the impact.”
Torres was shot in the arm and the back. She fled the scene by driving over rocks and landscaping before she crashed and stole a different vehicle.
She drove to a Grants hospital where doctors sent her back to Albuquerque to be treated, according to records from the shooting.
Torres was on probation at the time of shooting. State Police documents indicate that she pleaded guilty to several crimes connected to the shooting and was sentenced to 2½ years in prison. She was incarcerated at the New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility near Grants on Tuesday.
The District Attorney’s Office said in the reports released Tuesday that there was no evidence Williamson or Madrid acted unreasonably in shooting Torres.
“Agent Madrid had to make a split-second decision and her decision was to use deadly force in defense,” the District Attorney’s Office said in shooting documents. “Agent Williamson made his first split-second decision to use deadly force in defense of Agent Madrid.”
