State Police details officer's death as manhunt for suspect continues

A few hours before sunrise Friday, New Mexico State Police officer Justin Hare pulled behind a BMW with a flat tire along Interstate 40, near Tucumcari.

The driver walked up to his window and the two spoke about fixing the flat or even getting a ride to town.

Without warning, the man shot Hare once and then again, pushing the wounded officer into the passenger’s seat of his patrol vehicle. Police found Hare’s SUV wrecked on the side of the frontage road several miles away.

Hare had been removed from the vehicle somewhere in between, left to die on the dark stretch of road. While Hare was taken to a hospital, authorities followed the killer’s tracks for hours. They looped back to I-40 and disappeared.

Hare, 35, had been with State Police for five years. He left behind two children, with a third on the way.

“On a cold, dark and windy morning, he offered help to a person he thought was in need,” New Mexico State Police Chief Troy Weisler said in a briefing on the investigation Saturday morning. “The last words officer Hare uttered on this earth was to offer help to a man who’s about to kill him.”

Weisler wiped tears from his eyes and composed himself, then said: “Jaremy Smith, we are coming for you. I implore you to turn yourself in and surrender peacefully. There’s been enough death and despair.”

Police learned the BMW Smith was driving belonged to Phonesia Machado-Fore, a 52-year-old woman reported missing in South Carolina on Tuesday. Her body was found in a rural part of South Carolina on Friday night.

State Police said Smith is “a person of interest in the murder” of Machado-Fore.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Smith, a 33-year-old from Marion, South Carolina. He is facing an open count of murder, armed robbery, shooting at a motor vehicle and other charges in the death of Hare.

Weisler said Smith has ties to Albuquerque, where he had spent time in the past, but did not elaborate further. He wouldn’t say if authorities knew where Smith was headed next.

Court records show Smith has been arrested in South Carolina numerous times since 2008 on charges of grand larceny, burglary, shooting at a vehicle and armed robbery. In 2014, Smith was involved in a detention center riot and charged — as an inmate — with participating in a riot, possessing weapons and holding hostages.

In 2019, Smith unsuccessfully tried to sue officers of the Kershaw Correctional Institution for violating his civil rights in several alleged beatings behind bars.

New Mexico Public Safety Secretary Jason Bowie said authorities often look for “immediate answers” in the wake of an incident like Hare’s killing. He said sometimes it involves mental health issues, referencing the recent killing of officer Jonah Hernandez in Las Cruces.

“I’m here to tell you that there are some people in our society that are just violent,” Bowie said. “They’re calculated, deliberate in their actions, and they stop at absolutely nothing to prey on others.”

He said Jaremy Smith “is certainly that,” and in the quest to find him, authorities will mirror a few of those same traits.

“We will also be deliberate and calculated in our actions… We’ll be relentless in our pursuit to bring him into custody,” Bowie said, adding, ”anyone who is found aiding or harboring Jaremy Smith, we will also charge them and prosecute them to the fullest extent, and you can be sure of that.”

A GoFundMe page set up for Hare’s family said on Friday the officer “put on his uniform like any other day. Kissed (the mother of his children) goodbye and (said) ‘I’ll see you after work.’ Only this time, she nor his children would see him at the end of his shift.”

“Because of the evil act of a criminal, (she) and his 3 children will never hug and kiss him before the start or end of his shifts again. Instead, she got the knock on the door that no spouse ever wishes to receive. At that moment their lives were forever changed,” according to the GoFundMe narrative.

Efforts to reach Hare’s family were unsuccessful.

A traveler in need

On Saturday morning, Chief Weisler detailed Hare’s final call, one that would bring him into the path of Smith — who had apparently driven a long way to get here.

He said Hare responded around 5 a.m. Friday to reports of a man trying to flag down passersby on westbound Interstate 40 at milepost 318, west of Tucumcari. He said Hare came upon Smith, who was sitting in a white BMW with a flat tire along the shoulder.

Weisler said Smith walked up to the passenger’s side of Hare’s vehicle and “a short conversation ensued about repairing his tire and possibly getting a ride back to town.”

“Without warning, the suspect pulled out a firearm and shot officer Hare,” he said. Smith then walked to the driver’s side and shot Hare again.

Dispatch sent a second officer when Hare didn’t respond on his radio.

As the other officer was on the way, Hare’s duress button was pressed on the radio on his belt. The button sends an emergency signal to dispatch.

Weisler said it’s unclear if Hare pressed the button himself or if it was pressed when Smith moved Hare from the driver’s seat.

He said the other officer was on I-40 when they spotted Hare’s vehicle speeding down the frontage road, headed west. The officer got off the highway and found Hare’s vehicle crashed on the side of the road near milepost 304.

“The assisting officer approached officer Hare’s patrol unit, only to find that it was empty,” Weisler said. He said authorities backtracked and found Hare on the side of the frontage road, six miles from where he had been shot.

“We tracked what we believe to be Smith’s trail for quite some time, but eventually lost it when it returned back to the interstate,” Weisler said, adding that it’s possible he got a ride from there.

He said if Smith doesn’t turn himself in, “we will find him.”

“There’s nowhere he can run, there’s nowhere he can hide,” Weisler said.

He said Hare was “a pillar of the community” in Logan and still lived in the house he had grown up in. Weisler said everyone knew Hare, including at the hospital.

“These people all knew Justin, the people working on him, trying to save his life… he was a friend of theirs,” he said.

Bowie expressed gratitude to the State Police officer and Quay County deputy who found Hare on the side of the frontage road.

“I can simply not imagine what that experience must have been like for them,” he said. “But I can tell you that I’m extremely thankful that they were there, because if not for them, Justin would have died out there alone.”

‘Far from over’

Fifteen-hundred miles away, a community mourned another first responder, Sgt. Phonesia Machado-Fore, a paramedic crew chief in Florence County, South Carolina.

The 52-year-old was reported missing on Thursday, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). She was last seen at her home and was “believed to be driving her white BMW.”

Machado-Fore’s daughter said on Facebook that she was supposed to come by the daughter’s home “and never made it.” The daughter wrote, “She left no clues as to where she was going.”

On Friday morning, according to MCSO, New Mexico State Police told them the BMW was “involved in the murder of one of their officers.” The agency said additional information led deputies to her body, which was found on a property outside of Lake View in Dillon County.

MCSO said an autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. New Mexico State Police said Smith is “a person of interest in the murder.”

“This case is far from over,” MCSO wrote in a Facebook post. “Mrs. Fore was one of us, a fellow first responder. Her death is senseless.”

Florence County Emergency Medical Services, where Machado-Fore worked since 2017, said on Facebook that she “touched countless lives both personally and professionally.” She was a mother and grandmother.

“Her infectious laughter, quick wit, and devious smile were part of who she was as a person, coworker, and friend,” according to the post. “While she may not always agree with you, you knew that she would be there for you if you needed anything.”

“Phonesia would strive, every day, to be the best person she could and to take care of others. She truly had a servant’s heart and genuinely loved people.”

In the Facebook post, Florence County EMS also extended its condolences to “the family, friends, and coworkers of New Mexico State Police Officer Justin Hare.”