Bernalillo County to add lights along road to Metropolitan Detention Center after multiple deaths

Headlights cut through a dark stretch of road to illuminate crosses standing solemnly in the dirt.

Here, along the frontage road between Interstate 40 and the Metropolitan Detention Center, two MDC officers have died in crashes in recent years.

For years, their loved ones demanded local leadership put lights along the roadway to save other families from the grief they now share.

Now, the lights are coming on.

On Tuesday, the Bernalillo County Commission gave the final approval for the installation of 119 lights along the I-40 South Frontage Road between Atrisco Vista Boulevard and Shelly Road.

Adding the lights will cost $2.3 million and they’re expected to be ready by early 2026, according to a county news release.

The approval comes nearly a year after the death of 19-year-old Raquel Sachs, who had worked at the jail for less than a month. Sachs was heading to a night shift when she crashed and died on the frontage road.

A year earlier and just days after starting at MDC, 19-year-old Joshua Munoz died while driving home after his car drifted into oncoming traffic and a sharp overcorrection rolled the vehicle.

“I can’t believe I found other crosses,” said Munoz’s mother, Sujey Sánchez, on social media in a post originally in Spanish. “How many more families are broken?”

Sánchez has organized protests demanding lights be added to the road in the wake of her son’s death, according to social media posts. Sánchez could not be immediately reached for comment.

Her son, Munoz, had a degree in criminology and “wanted to help his country,” Sánchez wrote in a social media post.

Sach’s older sister, Alexsandria DeLeon, said she was happy to hear about the approval of the lights, though the progress will always be undercut by the sting of grief.

“It’s very sad that we never got to see the person she was meant to be,” DeLeon said. “We miss her so very much, not a day goes by that we don’t think of her.”

Sachs was studying to become a real estate agent and did so while on breaks at work, DeLeon said. DeLeon remembers her sister as a kind and loving young woman who “gave the best hugs.”

The jail’s warden, Kai Smith, welcomed the safety project.

“The Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) holds staff, inmate, and visitor safety as our highest priority, and we look forward to the completion of this next vital step in strengthening safety measures for everyone who travels the roads surrounding MDC,” Smith said in a statement Wednesday.

Though the lights came too late for Sachs and Munoz, they’re a small victory for the grieving families.

“My sister’s not really gone if she could save somebody else,” said Angelica DeLeon, Sach’s older sister.

And the lights aren’t Sach’s only legacy. Alexsandria DeLeon recently named her infant daughter after her younger sister.