Kentucky’s fantastic freshmen upset Louisville, advance to Elite Eight Sports, B-1
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Putin reaches out to U.S.
Hope for survivors wanes
FBI probes police shooting
Russian president calls Obama in surprise move to resolve the international standoff over Ukraine. PAge A-3
Official death toll remains at 17 as rural Washington community waits to learn the full scope of last week’s landslide. PAge A-3
Homeless camper’s death at hands of Albuquerque police spurs first known criminal investigation of the department. PAge A-5
12-year-old fit for trial in Roswell shooting
Police dig up bones in 62-year-old case
DNA may reveal whether remains belong to missing mother of four
Lawyers for boy charged with injuring classmates hope to reach agreement
Lawmaker was ‘true giant in his profession’ By Steve Terrell
The New Mexican
Detective Robert Garcia on Friday covers the excavation site where he and crime technicians found small fragments of what appear to be human bones. A spokeswoman for the police department said the bones could belong to Inez Garcia, who disappeared in 1952. LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN
By Chris Quintana
The New Mexican
I
nez Garcia was a 26-year-old mother of four when she disappeared without a trace more than 60 years ago. Police were baffled. Their main suspect, Garcia’s husband, was arrested multiple times but never went to trial, and the case quietly slipped into history. Now Santa Fe police have their first fresh lead in decades after what appear to be human bone fragments were discovered at her husband’s former residence in the
500 block of Oñate Street. Celina Westervelt, a police department spokeswoman, said the bone fragments could belong to Inez Garcia, but investigators won’t be sure until a crime lab in Texas analyzes them, and that could take several months. The hope is that some DNA will be salvageable from the samples collected, said Robert Garcia Jr., the police detective who discovered the bones. Police would then be able to use a DNA sample from one of Inez Garcia’s children to identify her. The husband, Juan Andres
Jose Garcia, who was 40 when his wife disappeared in the early morning hours of Nov. 6, 1952, had long been the main suspect in the investigation. But Westervelt said the case has been cold since the mid-1990s. That’s when Juan Garcia died. Investigators searched the property shortly after his death and unearthed some bones. But the Office of the Medical Investigator determined the bones belonged to animals, and the case went cold.
Please see BONeS, Page A-4 Fifteen months after Inez Garcia disappeared, her family offered a $400 reward for information, as reported in The New Mexican on Feb. 9, 1954. The missing woman’s husband, Juan Andres Jose Garcia, was arrested multiple times, one of which made the front page on Feb. 25, 1955, but he never went to trial.
Today Brilliantly sunny. High 65, low 37. PAge A-12
Obituaries Colin Drew Sutton (Durand), March 4 Claude Jean-Jacques Bovet, Feb. 25 PAge A-10
Pasapick www.pasatiempomagazine.com
Index
Calendar A-2
Watchdog received disproportionate number of complaints about vehicle, but did not take action The Associated Press
Medieval and traditional ballads from Finland, Sweden, the U.K., France and America, 7:30 p.m., Gig Performance Space, 1808-H Second St., $20 at the door, gigsantafe.com. More events in Calendar, A-2 and Fridays in Pasatiempo
Classifieds B-6
Max Coll, who began his career in the state Legislature as a Roswell conservative and ended it as a Santa Fe liberal, has died. State Sen. Peter Wirth of Santa Fe, who succeeded Coll in the House of Representatives 10 years ago, said Coll had a stroke last week and died Thursday. He was 82. Colleagues regarded Coll as a force in the Legislature. “He was a true giant in his profession,” Rep. Luciano “Lucky” Varela, D-Santa Fe, said Friday. “He was my mentor when I first started in the Legislature.” Varela recalled that years ago he and Coll co-sponsored a bill calling for singlepayer health insurance in New Mexico. “Max was persistent,” Varela said. “He set in motion health care reform not only in New Mexico but for the nation. … When you lose a giant like Max, we all lose.” Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement, “He was a stickler for staying on topic when the conversation started to wander. He might have annoyed some legislators when he switched from being a Republican from Roswell to a Democrat from Santa Fe, but his colleagues never lost respect for his skills.” Wirth, also a Democrat, said, “Max Coll was an extraordinary public servant who became my friend and mentor. He shared his wisdom and lessons learned from 32 years of legislative service. I will really miss him.” Wirth said they weren’t especially close until Coll announced his retirement and Wirth started his campaign for the District 47 seat. “I knocked on his door with a brochure and we sat and talked for a long time with all his birds squawking and dogs barking,” Wirth recalled. Coll endorsed Wirth in the primary, a move Wirth
Please see COLL, Page A-4
Government safety agency missed Cobalt clues By Dee-Ann Durbin and Tom Krisher
Scott & Johanna Hongell-Darsee
NEW MEXICAN FILE PHOTO
MAX COLL, 1932-2014
The Associated Press
ROSWELL — A Roswell judge concluded Friday that the 12-year-old boy accused of opening fire in his middle school gym and injuring two students is competent to stand trial. State District Judge Freddie Romero presided over a brief hearing for the boy, who is too young to be tried as an adult. Romero set another hearing for the end of April and ordered that the boy be held in Bernalillo County after prosecutors raised concerns about keeping him in a juvenile detention facility near Roswell. It could be June before the case goes to trial, but the boy’s lawyers said they hope to avoid trial and resolve the case by reaching a deal with prosecutors. The boy faces three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for the Jan. 14 shooting at Berrendo Middle School. His attorneys denied the charges on his behalf on Friday. A 12-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were seriously wounded when the defendant allegedly fired a shotgun that he had taken to school in a duffel bag. Authorities have said a teacher at the school talked the shooter into dropping the shotgun. After a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation of the boy was completed in January, he was transferred from an Albuquerque psychiatric facility to a juvenile center. Family members of the boy wept as he was brought into court Friday afternoon. The victims’ family members also attended the hearing. The boy would be tried as a juvenile. Under New Mexico law, the state can charge minors as adults only if they are at least 14. The Associated Press is not identifying the boy because of his age.
Max Coll sits in his home library with his dog Keeley on May 12, 2006.
DETROIT — For years, the U.S. government’s auto safety watchdog sent form letters to worried owners of the Chevrolet Cobalt and other General Motors small cars, saying it didn’t have enough information about problems with unexpected stalling to establish a trend or open an investigation. The data tell a different story.
Comics B-12
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An Associated Press review of complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that over a nine-year period, 164 drivers reported that their 2005-07 Chevrolet Cobalts stalled without warning. That was far more than any of the car’s competitors from the same model years, except for the Toyota Corolla, which was recalled after a government investigation in 2010. Stalling was one sign of the ignition switch failure that led GM
Lotteries A-2
Opinions A-11
last month to recall 1.6 million Cobalts and other compact cars, including the Saturn Ion, Pontiac G5 and Chevrolet HHR. Another 971,000 cars from model years 2008-11 were recalled late Friday to find faulty replacement switches, bringing the total to about 2.6 million. GM has linked the problem to at least 12 deaths and dozens of crashes. The company says the switch can slip out of the “run” position, which causes the engine to stall. This knocks out the power steering and powerassisted brakes, making the car harder to maneuver. Power to the device that
Sports B-1
Time Out B-11
Family A-9
BREAKING NEWS AT WWW.SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM
activates the air bags is also cut off. GM has recently acknowledged it knew the switch was defective at least a decade ago, and the government started receiving complaints about the 2005 Cobalt just months after it went on sale. House and Senate subcommittees have called the current heads of the automaker and NHTSA to testify April 1 and 2 about why it took so long for owners to be told there was a potentially deadly defect in their cars. Although the overall number of complaints represents only 0.02 percent of the nearly 625,000 Cobalts
Please see SAFeTY, Page A-4
Two sections, 24 pages TV Book, 32 pages 165th year, No. 88 Publication No. 596-440