McKinley County prosecutors classify vehicle attacks as violent assaults

When a car becomes the weapon in a fight, McKinley County prosecutors are no longer treating the incident like a traffic matter. They are putting vehicle attacks into the violent-assault lane, a shift that can move cases out of crash paperwork and into felony court with more serious consequences for defendants and more formal recognition of the harm to victims.

That approach matches two recent federal cases tied to the Gallup area. On Feb. 24, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico said Gallup man Dennison Billy, Jr. was charged after allegedly attacking a victim inside a vehicle and causing serious facial injuries while the victim was driving. On April 27, 2026, federal prosecutors filed a separate case against Darius Kyran Eskeets, alleging he struck and ran over a victim with a car near Vanderwagen after driving toward the victim and others, making a U-turn, veering off the road and hitting the victim with the vehicle.

The distinction matters in a county where violent crime remains a persistent problem. A county crime tracker using FBI data says McKinley County recorded 7,186 violent crimes and 6,159 property crimes from 2019 through 2023, including 1,859 aggravated assaults. That is the backdrop for a charging strategy that treats a vehicle not as part of a crash report, but as a dangerous instrument used in an assault.

It also fits how New Mexico’s system separates public-safety categories. McKinley County sits in the Eleventh Judicial District, which covers Gallup, and district courts handle felony first appearances, misdemeanors, DWI and DUI cases, domestic violence matters and other traffic violations. By contrast, the state Transportation Department’s traffic records system logs crashes that cause injury, death or at least $500 in property damage, while the Department of Public Safety’s Uniform Crime Reports are built from monthly offense submissions by city, county, state and tribal agencies. Those separate systems can determine whether a case is recorded as a crash or a crime.

The county’s prosecutorial leadership has also drawn scrutiny. On Aug. 29, 2025, Attorney General Raúl Torrez said his office would take over two violent-crime cases after then-District Attorney Bernadine Martin dismissed them, citing conflicts of interest but not referring them to another prosecutor. The New Mexico Administrative Office of the District Attorneys now lists John Bernitz as McKinley County’s district attorney, and his office is now under pressure to show whether the new vehicle-assault strategy produces tougher outcomes or simply gives a familiar threat a different label.