Trooper Aragon, 37, was struck by a suspect’s vehicle and killed on August 1, 2001 while laying stop sticks at approximately 0730 hours attempting to apprehend a suspect driving a stolen vehicle during a pursuit on I-40 near Grants, New Mexico. The incident started when two brothers went to the Grants Wal-Mart Super center about 7 a.m. and allegedly took some 40 boxes of Actifed, worth more than $300, in an apparent shoplifting heist. An alert store employee followed the brothers to the parking lot and wrote down the license plate number of the Toyota pickup truck they got into it and drove out of the parking lot. The two turned right on Santa Fe Avenue and were heading west on the street when Grants Police got a call from Wal-Mart about the reported shoplifting and a description of the truck and license plate. The dispatcher ran the plates and it came back stolen, adding that the truck was taken in Albuquerque, but he did not know when it was stolen. An all-points alert went out on the police radio, at which time Grants Police Sgt. Mike Trujillo spotted the truck and tried to stop it. The driver of the truck, Zachariah Craig, made a U-turn in the 1000 block of Santa Fe Avenue. One of the occupants, Aron Craig, jumped out of the truck and ran toward railroad tracks. Police took him into custody a short time later and brought Aron Craig to the Grants Police Station. The chase was on when Zachariah Craig sped off to the 85 Mile Marker on-ramp to Interstate 40 with Trujillo in pursuit where speeds reached well over 100 mph. Aragon and his partner State Police Officer William Cunningham, were in plain clothes and en route to a federal court to testify in a drug case when they heard the radio traffic about the pursuit and decided to lend a hand. Aragon and Cunningham were far in front of the chase when they stopped their patrol car in the center median and laid down stop sticks to puncture the tires of the Toyota pick up. As the speeding truck neared Mile Marker 126 the driver swerved off the road into the center median to avoid the strips and slammed head-on into Aragon, killing him instantly. After hitting Aragon, Zachariah Craig drove through the center median, crossed the two westbound lanes of interstate traffic, and ran up a highway on-ramp from the State Highway 6 overpass where lost control of the truck. He got out of the truck and ran, but two state police officers and a Grants Police officer, Mike Trujillo got out of their units, ran him down and arrested him. Trooper Aragon had been with the New Mexico State Police for eight years and had been in law enforcement for an additional five years. He was a member of the New Mexico State Police Canine Team. Approximately twenty seven hundred people attended his funeral. White doves were released at his funeral and he received a 21 gun salute and a bagpiper played Amazing Grace.
Craig was charged with 1st degree murder which carries the death penalty in
