2 weeks Ago
A Santa Fe man is facing numerous charges after, police alleged, he got into a drunken hit-and-run crash and then tried to kidnap a woman out of the Walmart parking lot on Cerrillos Road earlier this week. Police went to the Walmart a little after 7 p.m.
Sunday and interviewed a woman who said the male suspect had parked close to her and asked her name, according to a statement of probable cause filed Monday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court. She said she had a "weird feeling" about him so she got back in her vehicle, but he followed her, sticking his head into her vehicle, asking her name and then telling her to come with him. She said the man, later identified as Jose Ceja-Reyes, 39, opened her driver's side door and grabbed her shoulder.
She said she told him she would come but had to grab some things out of her vehicle first, and then ran to a nearby gas station to get help. She told police she saw Ceja-Reyes in her vehicle for a short time before he left in his pickup truck, and her cigarettes were missing when she returned. Police stopped Ceja-Reyes nearby on Cerrillos Road.
He admitted to drinking and told police twice he had been out "looking for whores," according to the statement of probable cause. Ceja-Reyes' truck also matched the description of one that had been involved in a hit-and-run near the intersection of Cerrillos and Richards Avenue that evening. Ceja-Reyes provided two Breathalyzer samples at the police station, with breath alcohol readings of 0.
2 and 0.18, police wrote. While being arrested, Ceja-Reyes told police he had left his 13-year-old son home alone; the boy was unharmed, police said, and they turned him over to the custody of an uncle.
Ceja-Reyes is facing a slew of charges, the most serious being attempted first-degree kidnapping, a second-degree felony. He is also facing a fourth-degree felony county of burglary of a vehicle and numerous misdemeanors, mostly related to accusations of driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident. Ceja-Reyes was booked into the Santa Fe County jail early Monday morning and was still jailed as of Thursday.
Prosecutors filed a motion Tuesday asking that Ceja-Reyes be held in jail until his trial, citing a history of incidents including a past DWI arrest, a 2016 restraining order in which his child's mother alleged he had hit her and a 2022 arrest accusing him of breaking into an ex-girlfriend's residence while drunk. Charges in the 2022 case later were dismissed. A hearing is scheduled in state District Court on Sept.
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