ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It was a wild scene down I-40 that could very easily have ended in tragedy. The two women were driving on rims, running from police after they were accused of stealing fake eyelashes from a family dollar.
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Dashcam footage shows the moment a long police chase came to an end. Moments before the car came to a complete stop in the median, the driver of the car, Maria Acosta, nearly drove head-on into westbound traffic on I-40.
The 100-mile an hour chase was already about twenty minutes old when State Police jumped in near the Route 66 Casino. The chase started after Maria Acosta and Lori Armijo were reported for stealing fake eyelashes from a Family Dollar in Cubero. The criminal complaint says Acosta and Armijo assaulted the cashier before taking off on I-40. The Jeep they were in, had been reported stolen from Albuquerque.
Officers used a spike strip near the casino to try and stop Acosta. They hit it but kept on going for another ten minutes to the outskirts of Albuquerque. Dashcam footage shows the rubber from her front tires flying off, and sparks flying as she loses control of the Jeep.
At the time of the chase, Acosta was wanted for blowing off her pretrial supervision in another stolen car chase from 2020. Her passenger Lori Armijo has also been arrested at least five times in the past two years.
Both Acosta and Armijo were released from MDC. They both have warrants for their arrest in Cibola County, for failure to appear in court for the crimes in this case that happened there.
