A Santa Fe man faces a homicide charge in connection with a crash in late January on Airport Road that killed 77-year-old Robert “Mo” Morehead.
Santa Fe police on Friday filed a felony charge of homicide by vehicle against Edgar Madrigal-Lopez, 24, who officers allege was driving about 90 mph when he struck Morehead’s vehicle.
An arrest warrant was issued Friday against Madrigal-Lopez, but an online inmate database for the Santa Fe County jail did not indicate he had been booked as of Monday evening.
Santa Fe police did not answer calls and emails Monday seeking information on the warrant.
The criminal charge comes after an almost two-month investigation by police following the crash, which occurred at about noon on Jan. 24.
Morehead, driving an Audi Quattro, was making a left turn onto Airport Road headed east from Calle Po Ae Pi when Madrigal-Lopez struck his car driving a Ford F-150 pickup westbound on Airport, according to police reports.
Morehead was pronounced dead at an area hospital within an hour, according to reports, and Madrigal-Lopez was taken to a hospital for treatment of nonlife-threatening injuries.
Initial crash reports indicated Madrigal-Lopez told police at the scene he had been driving about 45 to 50 mph when he crashed into Morehead. But after reconstructing the crash using surveillance video and crash data from both vehicles, investigators determined he was driving about 90 mph. The posted speed limit on Airport Road where the crash occurred is 40 mph.
Two witnesses at the scene of the crash told police Madrigal-Lopez was driving “at a high rate of speed.”
A Santa Fe police crash investigator who reconstructed the crash concluded in an arrest warrant affidavit “the crash would not [have] happened, and Robert would not have suffered fatal injuries” if Madrigal-Lopez had been traveling 40 mph at the time.
The investigator wrote if Madrigal-Lopez had been driving at the speed limit at the time, Morehead would have been given 2.37 seconds more to make the turn and clear the roadway.
Officers collected and reviewed surveillance footage from a nearby Allsup’s gas station, Castro’s Alterations and El Paisano to piece together the minutes leading up to the crash, according to the affidavit. The footage showed Madrigal-Lopez “accelerating quickly” from a stoplight at Calle Atajo and passing a white box truck at a minimum speed of about 58 mph through the intersection at Zepol Road, police wrote. When Morehead pulled out to make a left turn, he could be seen in the video “for a very brief amount of time accelerating and turning the wheels” before the pickup truck quickly comes into frame and crashes into him, the affidavit says.
The crash investigator determined Madrigal-Lopez’s pickup truck was still traveling at a minimum speed of about 50 mph after separating from Morehead’s vehicle after the impact.
Morehead was a former journalist and retired advertising professional who had in recent years moved to Santa Fe from Texas with his wife. He was a “devoted member” of the Rotary Club of Santa Fe, according to other members, and he was a member of the local grassroots group Stop Aggressive Driving, which has advocated for tougher enforcement of speeding, traffic and noise violations in the city.
Mayor Alan Webber recognized Morehead’s death as the City Council voted in February to approve a steeper penalty — $500 — for violating the city’s noise ordinance, targeting noisy mufflers on Santa Fe streets.
The fatal crash is one of several in recent years that have ignited concerns over street racing and “aggressive driving” in Santa Fe, particularly on Cerrillos Road and Airport Road, two of the city’s main thoroughfares.
In the days after the charge was filed against Madrigal-Lopez, a pedestrian was struck and killed on Cerrillos Road in a hit-and-run crash, the most recent fatal crash in the city.
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