ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Lapel video shows Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies responding to the fatal DWI crash on I-25 earlier this month. Two people died in the collision and a Cuba Police officer and National Guardsman is charged in the case.
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On May 1, deputies with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office arrived on the scene of a wrong-way crash on I-25 near Tramway. Witnesses told deputies they watched as a wrong-way driver collided with a van carrying three passengers, saying the wrong-way driver didn’t have his headlights on.
Deputies later identify the wrong-way driver as 29-year-old Brandon Barber, a member of the New Mexico National Guard and a Cuba Police Officer, and find an open container in his truck. Barber claims he’d only had two beers, and stopped drinking at 7 p.m., but deputies say they could smell alcohol on his breath.
While deputies conduct a field sobriety test on Barber, firefighters used the ‘jaws of life’ to get the three victims out of the crushed van. One of the victims is still alive. Barber was transported to UNM Hospital where one of the deputies questions him further.
Barber then changes his story saying he only had one beer, but he couldn’t remember anything else including where he’d been drinking, telling the deputy he thinks he may have been in Bernalillo.
Barber is now being charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and great bodily harm by vehicle. Barber was released from jail last week. The Sheriff’s Office says at last check, the surviving victim is still in critical condition at the hospital.
