Investigators seek witnesses to fatal NM 502 crash near Pojoaque

Investigators are asking drivers who passed NM 502 near Pojoaque High School to help reconstruct the final moments of a crash that killed a 96-year-old woman and shut down one of the region’s most heavily used commuter corridors. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Homicide Investigation Division said eyewitness accounts could help clarify what happened just before and after impact.

The crash happened Wednesday, May 6, around 1:20 to 1:30 p.m. and involved two vehicles. Santa Fe County said the woman’s identity was being withheld pending notification of next of kin. Deputies now want anyone who saw the collision, or who saw either vehicle in the moments leading up to it, to contact investigators and share what they know.

The collision closed both eastbound and westbound lanes of NM 502 between County Road 101D and State Road 30. Santa Fe County directed westbound drivers to detour through Española to State Road 30, while eastbound motorists coming from Los Alamos were told to use State Road 30 or State Road 4 to get around the closure. Los Alamos County also warned residents that NM 502 was shut because of a head-on collision with injuries and told commuters to expect delays and use alternate routes.

For Los Alamos, the crash landed on a road that carries daily traffic between the Hill, White Rock, Pojoaque and Española, along with school trips, medical runs, deliveries and emergency detours. A crash on this stretch can ripple far beyond the scene itself, slowing traffic in both directions and forcing drivers onto longer routes that add time to a commute already tied closely to Los Alamos National Laboratory and countywide travel patterns.

The fatal crash advisory was posted by Santa Fe County on May 6, and the sheriff’s hotsheets also show an earlier motor vehicle crash entry on State Road 502 near Pojoaque High School. That record underscores how often this corridor appears in county incident logs and why investigators want every useful detail from drivers who were on the road that afternoon.