Former APD Sergeant arrested for DWI

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - He was an off duty APD Sergeant when he backed over a woman in a bar parking lot killing her.

Police said he even admitted to partying and blacking out that night but the charges against Andrew Gallegos were dropped.

News 13 has learned he has a new job as a cop and new trouble.

Gallegos was arrested early Saturday morning after police said he was doing 59 in a 40mph zone down Eubank on his motorcycle.

The officer said Gallegos was unsteady and smelled like alcohol, but Gallegos, who is now a sergeant with Isleta Pueblo Police, refused to take a filed sobriety test or a breathalyzer.

This is the same Andrew Gallegos who was an APD traffic sergeant when he was charged in the hit and run death of Vera Haskell back in 2008.

Gallegos backed over the 47-year-old woman in the parking lot of Sidewinders, an East Central bar.

Haskell was drunk and passed out under Gallegos’ truck.

“There was some speculation back in 2009 that he was intoxicated, although we were never able to prove that, and that’s why someone was killed or he wasn’t aware that he possibly ran over someone,” Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said.

Gallegos though was never tested for DWI because he drove off and was not identified as the driver for a couple days.

Court documents said Gallegos told an officer he blacked out that night and wasn’t sure what he did or where he was.

Still the case went before a judge a year after the accident.

“It is my impression as I said the impression of at least three of the officers that testified, the person operating that truck had no knowledge that there had been an accident,” District Court Judge Pat Murdoch said at the trial in 2009.

Murdoch said the state failed to prove otherwise and therefore dismissed the charges and Gallegos walked away a free man.

News 13 asked Brandenburg if Gallegos got off the hook back then.

“I don’t think that it would be fair to speculate, I mean the court heard the evidence, the court made a decision and that’s the way it happens, I think that everything was done according to the law,” said Brandenburg.

Gallegos retired from APD after the charges were dropped.

He has been with the Isleta Police Department for less than a year, it is not clear if the department knew about his prior arrest when they hired him.

Gallegos is now suspended without pay.