Attorney General declined to charge Santa Fe officer whose child fatally shot the other
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Attorney General Ra煤l Torrez鈥檚 office decided not to prosecute a Santa Fe officer who left his gun out before one of his children fatally shot the other in 2022 at the family鈥檚 Rio Rancho home.
鈥淎t the time of this shooting, there was no specific legal duty for parents to secure their firearms accessible to children beyond the difficult-to-meet reckless endangerment standard in the child abuse statute,鈥� according to a Sept. 1 declination letter from Deputy Attorney General Greer Staley.
Staley said the AG鈥檚 office agreed with previous Attorney General Hector Balderas, who also declined to prosecute the case, but found Santa Fe Police Department officer Jonathan Harmon kept the gun loaded and 鈥渘ot otherwise safeguarded鈥� from his children.
Staley wrote that the Benny Hargrove Gun Safety Act 鈥� signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in March 鈥� may have applied to the case 鈥渉ad it been in force at the time鈥� but couldn鈥檛 be used retroactively.
The act makes it a crime to fail to safely store firearms out of children鈥檚 reach.
鈥淭he passage of Benny鈥檚 Bill highlights the inadequacies of the previously existing child abuse laws and the need for that specific statute to fill the unintentional void they created,鈥� Staley wrote in the letter. 鈥淎fter a review of other possible child abuse statutes, our office has determined that the facts here do not meet the elements required for prosecution under applicable laws.鈥�
Harmon declined to comment to the Journal for this story.
The Rio Rancho Police Department investigated the Dec. 8, 2021, incident.
Harmon and his wife found their 2-year-old son Lincoln fatally shot in the kitchen with a gun lying nearby, according to police. Lincoln鈥檚 4-year-old brother later told police he used a chair to get chewing gum from a cabinet and found his father鈥檚 gun, unintentionally shooting Lincoln with it.
Harmon told police he kept the gun in that cabinet and wondered whether the boys were fighting over it when the shooting occurred.
Benjamin Valdez, a spokesman with the Santa Fe Police Department, said on Sept. 5 Rio Rancho police notified them of the Torrez鈥檚 decision not to prosecute the case.
He said Harmon had been on alternate duty, 鈥渘on-field work conducting administrative tasks,鈥� throughout the investigation and the AG鈥檚 review.
鈥淲ith this new information, Officer Harmon will return to full duty status and, as is standard operating procedure once an outside investigation is complete, the Department will initiate an Administrative Investigation into the matter,鈥� Valdez said.
The case also led to a transparency dispute when Rio Rancho police repeatedly refused to release records to the Journal, the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and Santa Fe New Mexican.
FOG and the New Mexican both filed a lawsuit over the denials, and then-Attorney General Balderas said Rio Rancho officials broke the law by failing to turn over the records.
Eventually, all records were released by Balderas鈥� office.
