Mentmore man arrested for third DWI after .25 breath test in Gallup

Gallup police booked Stanley Spencer, 55, of Mentmore, after a welfare check near the U-Save Truck Stop on West Highway 66 led to a third DWI arrest and breath samples of .25. He was taken to the McKinley County Adult Detention Center and scheduled for a pretrial hearing on July 11.

Officers found a white Honda Civic parked in the middle of the road and saw it begin rolling backward as they arrived, turning what began as a welfare check into a DWI investigation. Spencer gave inconsistent explanations about what happened, smelled strongly of alcohol, and had bloodshot eyes, according to the report. He later admitted he had been drinking a Bud Light several hours earlier and failed field sobriety testing before providing the breath samples.

The arrest added aggravated DWI, no license and an open-container violation to his case. Under New Mexico law, aggravated DWI includes driving with a blood alcohol concentration of .16 or higher within three hours of driving and refusing chemical testing when there is evidence of intoxication. The New Mexico DWI Handbook also says officers can rely on community-caretaker vehicle stops and field sobriety tests as part of a DWI investigation, the same tools used in Spencer’s case.

The June 19 roundup did not stop with Spencer. It listed several other mid-June DWI and aggravated DWI arrests, including first-offense and second-offense cases, underscoring how often local law enforcement is still dealing with impaired drivers in and around Gallup. The pattern matters in McKinley County, where traffic along West Highway 66, long nighttime drives, and alcohol-related calls can quickly turn a roadside stop into a public-safety risk for other motorists, pedestrians and businesses along the corridor.

State crash data give that risk a wider frame. The University of New Mexico Geospatial and Population Studies’ 2024 New Mexico DWI report said McKinley County had an alcohol-involved fatal-crash rate of 2.2 per 10,000 residents, among the highest in the state. The same report says the crash figures are used by traffic-safety officials, legislators and law-enforcement agencies to track problems and direct funding, making cases like Spencer’s part of a broader enforcement record that reaches beyond one arrest.