Mescalero man sentenced on domestic violence charge

LAS CRUCES — A man who severely beat his girlfriend on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in 2024 was given a prison sentence of nearly six years in Las Cruces federal district court Tuesday.

Myron Edward Blake Jr., 40, pleaded guilty in July to assault of a domestic partner resulting in substantial bodily injury.

Blake was prosecuted under a federal statute granting jurisdiction to federal courts in the case of certain serious crimes. Both people are enrolled members of the Mescalero Apache Tribe.

The investigation by a Bureau of Indian Affairs special agent began after law enforcement assisted the unidentified assault victim on June 27, 2024. First responders arriving at a trailer home on Mescalero Boulevard found the woman bleeding profusely with injuries to her head and a leg. A subsequent examination also found signs she had been strangled.

The couple confirmed they had been in a relationship for over three years. She said that, during an argument and while intoxicated, Blake struck her with a wooden board and a cinder block that had been serving as a front porch bench, according to the federal complaint. Blake claimed initially that the cinder block bounced and struck her after she threw it at him.

This July, Blake agreed to plead guilty, admitting to striking her on the head and causing lacerations and bleeding and hitting her body with the wooden board.

On Tuesday, Acting U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison announced federal District Judge Margaret Strickland had sentenced him to 57 months in prison, with no parole available, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a 500-hour drug abuse program.