CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – A shooting on Zuni Canyon Road on November 24 of 2020 caused panic and confusion in Cibola County. The shooting appears to have been a random act of violence, and no similar shootings have occurred in Cibola County since this incident. The charge for this attack was not attempted murder, but aggravated battery, according to New Mexico State Statutes. Katie Mallery was shot at while on her daily walk down Zuni Canyon Road. She explained that people would often stop to make sure she was okay, and she would always reply “yes” because she was just on a walk. On November 24, while walking down Zuni Canyon Road, a blue hatchback SUV pulled up next K. Mallery and asked if she was okay, after replying that she was fine, the driver, whom she described as Native American, opened the door and fired on her with his shotgun. For her own safety, K. Mallery carried a side arm with her on these walks, she returned fire before being shot again. “I must have blacked out; I don’t remember emptying my gun.” Mallery still has bird shot in her body from the attack. Since the shooting, the case has been closed by CCSO because a motive could not be determined and there was no evidence at the scene to be collected. The Mallerys are concerned that there case is not being given proper treatment, and that there concerns are overlooked. When the Cibola Citizen went to speak with CCSO, Lieutenant Maxine Spidel brought out a large book, the casefile, with the all the information and work that has been done to find the shooter. This book was larger than even some murder casefiles that the Cibola Citizen has reviewed from other agencies.
The Mallerys have reached out to the New Mexico State Police, The New Mexico Governor’s Office, and the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office. Each of these agencies have explained that there is little they can do to help, on January 20 the NMAG’s Office sent the Mallerys a letter alerting them that there is nothing they can do to help the family. NMSP called back the Mallery’s and ex plained that there is nothing they can do to assist the Mallery’s, who replied that they would rather have a phone call from CCSO. “At this point with no evidence to prove anything other than this being a random act of violence, we are forced to close this case until we have new evidence. Have we forgotten about it? No. Every blue car that passes, every car we go to and there is a blue SUV, we’re constantly thinking is this the vehicle? But until we have evidence and can find justice for the Mallery family, this case is always on our mind.” Lieutenant Maxine Spidel said. Be On The Lookout The Mallery’s allege that the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office never put out a BOLO – Be On The Lookout – notice that would alert all surrounding agencies for the blue hatchback SUV the shooter was allegedly driving. According to the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office, an ATL – Attempt To Locate – notice to McKinley and Bernalillo Counties. “For the first week and a half, I pity everyone who was driving a blue SUV. Us, NMSP, Milan and Grants had every blue SUV in this county being pulled over,” Sheriff Mace said. After the first week, this effort to pull over blue SUVs had to come to an end. Sheriff Mace said that this was because, if they pulled over every blue SUV and every Native American in the county, they would be on the borderline of infringing civil rights. CCSO explained that the Attempt To Locate alerted NMSP who helped comb the mountain looking for the vehicle K. Mallery described. “Well, later on, she changed the description of the vehicle. It was in the next two or three days, it wasn’t a very long-time frame. When you’re – we’re going to say this was a traumatic incident. So, sometimes people, from what happens initially and as the adrenaline starts coming down, memories come back to them. Sometimes little things like do change on a traumatic incident. That was tough for us because we had three different descriptions throughout our investigation. What has been consistent is that the vehicle is a blue SUV. Make and model have changed a few times through the process of the investigation. Outside of the ATL, Detective Kemp reached out to Cibola General Hospital, and all counties that touch Cibola County with hospitals, to alert them if anyone with gunshot wounds come in. CCSO was never alerted by any hospitals in or around Cibola about a patient coming in with gunshot wounds. Allegations of unprofessionalism “Here is what really concerns me, [CCSO] came up with a theory, Detective Kemp gets a call and he’s on the way to the crime scene. Maxine Spidel, who is his supervisor, speaks to him. At this time, I’m working on the blast crew with her husband [whom] gives him information on me, you know, blah blah blah, and they come up with a theory about our autistic son,” Wesley Mallery, K. Mallery’s husband, said. “They said that our son must have shot me accidentally and that someone drove me down the road, and then [Wesley Mallery] picked me up, and made it look like someone shot me. But there are witnesses, and they never got any witness statements, I mean they got mine, my husbands and my families, but none of the other witnesses and there are ten people who saw me walking. I was not injured on my walk, and I wasn’t carrying a shotgun so I didn’t shoot myself,” Katie Mallery said. “When you have a crime you look at all aspects, all angles of the crime, especially with the people closest to you,” Detective Kemp said, “We’re walking into this with no information, so we have to look at all possibilities. It was just stated that her autistic son had handled the firearm and could have done a negligent discharge which is just accidentally pulling the trigger and setting off the firearm. We’ve had many cases where people have done that. We’ve done those investigations and through the course of the investigation the individual comes forward and says ‘Hey, you know what? I accidentally put fired on myself or my friend did it, and I didn’t want him to get in trouble.’ So all that was is process of elimination, it wasn’t end-all-be-all, it was just, lets get this part of the investigation out of the way.” In body camera footage provided by the Mallerys of CCSO, deputies are heard discussing her autistic son, alleging that if he shot her, they would send the case to the district attorney and it would be done. CCSO found no evidence to prove that this was the case, however, and this helped them eliminate potential suspects, according to Sheriff Mace. Sheriff Mace said they learned about the Mallerys autistic son through the course of the investigation. The Mallerys alleged there was zero effort put into this investigation by CCSO. GeoFence Warrant Cibola County Sheriff’s Office worked with the 13th Judicial District to try and get what is known as a GeoFence Warrant. This warrant would allow CCSO to see everybody with a cell phone in a broad area. The Mallerys presented the Cibola Citizen with a copy of the GeoFence warrant written by Detective Kemp. In this copy of the warrant, the date was written as November 20, despite the shooting having been on November 24. K. Mallery explained that the warrant was denied because of concerns for privacy “the criminal’s privacy” she said, and because the information was filled out wrong.
When the Cibola Citizen showed CCSO the copy of the warrant received from the Mallerys, they noticed immediately that the copy was a draft, and not the final warrant presented to the 13th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “That is a rough draft,” Detective Kemp said, “I am positive that we provided the Mallerys with the final draft of the warrant.”
In the final draft, all of the dates were corrected, though the dates had nothing to do with why the warrant was denied. Sheriff Mace explained that the warrant was denied, but not because any information was incorrect. Instead, he explained that the warrant was denied for two reasons: One, the privacy of the locals could be infringed if this warrant went through; Two, CCSO could not prove that the shooter had a cell phone and therefore the warrant could not be justified. This is because the burden of proof for securing a GeoFence Warrant is extremely high. Evidence CCSO arrived on the scene of the shooting fifteen minutes after the phone call came into Cibola Regional Communication Center. “There was absolutely no evidence at the scene. No tire tracks, no footprints, no nothing. Which is odd, first off, because anyone that shoots a shotgun knows – she made a statement that she was fired on twice, right? Two to three. So, when you fire a shotgun – from a pump shotgun, fire, pump, the shell is going to come out, right? Even if it’s a single shot breakover. Fire, the shell is going to come out. No matter what type of shotgun you’re operating, whether it’s a pump action breakover, or a double barrel, you’re still going to have some kind of shell casing, and there was nothing,” Sheriff Mace explained. The sheriff explained there was no proof of evidence tampering at the scene. K. Mallery explained that she must have passed out, because she didn’t recall firing the last of her bullets, and she doesn’t recall the blue SUV driving away. “Why are they saying there is no evidence, of course there is evidence, it’s inside my body,” K. Mallery said, talking about the bird shot still in her body. Later, the Mallerys were concerned because
Wesley Mallery’s parents had shotgun shells placed neatly in a line on the fence of their property on Mount Taylor. They were concerned that CCSO didn’t take this situation seriously but CCSO explained that no crime was committed in the placement of these shells and that it could not be connected to the 2020 shooting.
Because CCSO couldn’t link this to K. Mallery’s shooting, the family alleges that CCSO did not do its due diligence. Katie’s firearm, The Mallerys were concerned because K. Mallery’s handgun was taken into evidence custody by CCSO. The Mallerys allege that there was no evidence receipt for her firearm. Det. Kemp explained that “Her firearm is the only physical evidence we had. Her firearm, and the shell casings from her revolver.” Sheriff Mace added, “Where that becomes important is, if we do identify a suspect, and their car does have bullet holes in it, we need that weapon to be able to send it to a lab for comparison of grooves. Another thing here, is that we need to maintain that chain of custody.”
After the case was closed in 2021, the firearm was returned to K. Mallery. This was around eight months later. Video evidence. The Mallerys allege that CCSO did not do their due diligence in acquiring video footage from the area about the shooting.
The Mallerys allege that they had to go door-to-door themselves collecting video footage because the Sheriff’s Office was not doing this. Sheriff Mace explained that CCSO was collecting video footage, but many of the cameras they checked on were either not recording, or not pointing toward the road. Sheriff Mace then explained that a phone call came in to Cibola Regional Dispatch in the Zuni Canyon area alleging that an armed man was going around demanding video camera footage. According to Sheriff Mace, CCSO informed W. Mallery that they are working on his case, and that if acquired all of the evidence himself, if they go to court for this case and the defense attorneys ask where the evidence was acquired, it would be a bad look to say, “the victims gave us this.” CCSO worked with RCFL, the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory to enhance the video footage and better see the vehicle that the shooter allegedly drove. However, RCFL explained that there were no enough pixels on the camera to enhance the video footage.
Using video camera footage that he acquired, and using his skills from being a US Army Ranger, W. Mallery was able to put together a timeline of where the blue SUV had gone and he was able to follow the vehicle up until the end of Zuni Canyon Road in Grants. “You can’t go off the camera footage from [a house on Zuni Canyon] because [the resident] had not manually changed the camera, it was either from Daylight Savings Time or to Daylight Savings Time, so [this] camera was actually off by an hour. So, we had to out that into calculation… The other thing is that you can’t really tell the speed of the vehicle,” Kemp said, “Once you hit State Road 53 you have no cameras. They could have gone right to Ramah, Left into Grants, left to go on the off ramp to go on Eastbound [Interstate 40], left to go Westbound. They could have gone left to go on Santa Fe in Grants.” Sheriff Mace explained, “His timeline is completely different than what we have, and our timeline is more accurate based on dispatch time, unit time – like how long did it take for him to get there, even take into equation that the time is off from the property camera. We can narrow it down to a little more reasonable than what he had.” Case closed This case is closed, “for the computer only” according to Sheriff Mace. He explained that if any new evidence comes up, CCSO will continue to look into this case: “You can see the casefile there, that casefile is thicker than most – probably a more serious crime. Not that we don’t do a thorough job on other crimes as well, but we recognize the seriousness in this because people don’t randomly get shot. We want to find a suspect and hold them accountable for this. So, when, as far as I’m concerned, we staffed this case as supervisors – I mean the administration staff, myself, the undersheriff, and my lieutenant. That’s how this stuff gets better, ‘hey Det. Kemp, I need you to look at this,’ and he gets it done, its hands on, we’re involved and we are supervising. So when I think it was handled properly, absolutely. Its horrible to say it, I’m not trying to be negative, but sometimes crimes don’t get solved. That is the harsh reality of the world we live in. Not every case is like you see on television in some of these CSI shows right? Sometimes cases just aren’t solved. You can have all the evidence in the world on a certain case, but if you still can’t identify a suspect, what do you do? What makes this case even more difficult is that we are operating on zero evidence. But we didn’t say ‘we have no evidence’ and call it a day. My staff did an excellent, thorough investigation. That casefile, our reports, and all the actions we took prove that. If it were a shady case, we wouldn’t be able to produce the documents that we have, we wouldn’t be able to produce the body of videos we have. I understand that they’re upset they were victims of a horrible crime and no one is being held accountable yet. I feel that. I want accountability to, but constant harassment and ridicule, they went as far as to find my detective and tell him that he’s worthless, you know? I’m sure you’ve heard them say that. That’s not professional, but we don’t let that discourage us. For those first three weeks of this incident, that was all we eat breathed and sleep at this office. Every boot on the ground that was our focus, almost for a month and a half. We’re a smaller agency so we put every resource we have go to a bigger agency and see if their sheriff and undersheriff are out there helping to investigate. As far as I’m concerned, my guys did an amazing job. Is everything perfect all the time? No, its not, but we work around it and correct mistakes we have in this particular case, everywhere we went, there was no evidence.” There have been no other shooting incidents like the one on Zuni Canyon. “Its just odd,” Sheriff Mace concluded.