Santa Fe woman arrested for chasing security officer with syringe needles
Santa Fe NM Aug 19 2018
Kiana Montoya, 25, is a familiar face to the employees at the McDonald’s on St. Francis Drive, manager Victor Rivera-Martinez said. She has been in there almost every day, he said of Montoya, whose address is listed in various public documents as a homeless shelter on Cerrillos Road, and the restaurant’s staff often ask her to leave.
But, when the manager asked her to leave Wednesday evening because she seemed to be intoxicated, he said, Montoya laughed at him.
And when a security guard tried to escort her out, things escalated.
“She started busting out needles,” Rivera-Martinez said, explaining that Montoya displayed hypodermic needles with syringes. “She just laid them on the counter in front of everybody and all the customers got pretty scared.”
Then, police reports say, Montoya armed herself with two of the needles and chased the security guard through the store and into the parking lot.
A Santa Fe police officer who responded to a report of an aggravated assault at the fast-food eatery arrived to see Montoya chasing a uniformed security guard around the parking lot, a report says, brandishing a hypodermic needle in each fist. One of the needles was uncapped, the report says, and both were pointed toward the guard.
The guard, who did not respond to The New Mexican’s request for comment, told police he was in fear for his life and ran outside the store to get Montoya away from customers and employees.
When police arrived, the report says, Montoya was “lunging at the security guard” as he tried to fend her off with a baton.
Sgt. Gardner Finney yelled at Montoya to drop the syringes, he wrote in a report. She turned to look at Finney, his report says, but didn’t lower the syringes.
When Montoya started to walk quickly back toward the store entrance, Finney wrote in the report, he “realized that force was necessary to keep the security guard, customers and myself safe.”
After Montoya refused “several” commands, Finney used his police-issued baton and hit her left wrist, he wrote, forcing her to drop the uncapped syringe.
“I continued to give her commands to drop the other syringe,” Finney wrote. “Montoya refused to drop the second syringe and continued to brandish it toward me.”
Finney hit her twice in the right wrist with his baton, he wrote, and once she’d dropped it, swept her off balance and onto the ground, then cuffed her. Finney said he noticed that the ground around them was littered with syringes.
Montoya, who the police report says gave off “a strong odor of alcohol,” told officers that she did not want to talk about what happened.
When medics arrived to evaluate her, the report says, Montoya refused medical attention and was taken to jail.
Montoya faces a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Court records show she also was wanted on at least one warrant for failing to appear for court proceedings related to a 2017 case in which she pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of attempting to commit battery on a health care worker.
Jail logs show that Wednesday’s arrest was the 24th time Montoya’s been booked at the Santa Fe County jail. Her record stretches to 2012, inmate logs show, when she was charged with aggravated DWI.
On Thursday, a magistrate said Montoya would have to pay $250, or 10 percent of her $2,500 bond, to get out of jail. He pointed out that she has multiple bench warrants on her record for failing to appear in court and said she represents a danger to the community.
As of 6 p.m. Thursday, Montoya was still in jail.
Nobody was stuck by a needle in Wednesday’s attack, Rivera-Martinez said, but some of the staff were “pretty shooken up.”
“You could get pretty sick from it,” Rivera-Martinez said. “Or catch something.”
Santa Fe New Mexico .com
