Thoreau man arrested for aggravated DWI after blowing .30, .33, .32
A Thoreau witness flagged a staggering driver, and Felix Long’s breath samples of .30, .33 and .32 turned a roadside stop into an aggravated DWI arrest.
A witness at Thoreau Speedway on Highway 371 near mile marker 1 called Metro Dispatch after seeing a man staggering as he got into a black Toyota Tacoma and drove away. McKinley County Sheriff’s Officer Miguel Bittony found the truck near Navarre Boulevard and stopped it in the parking lot of the Thoreau Post Office at 3 Prewitt Street, where the driver was identified as Felix Long, 51, of Thoreau.
Long told Bittony he had been driving from home to get something to eat, but he showed several signs of intoxication, including slurred speech, bloodshot eyes, the smell of alcohol and trouble keeping his balance. He admitted to drinking two cans of Michelob before getting behind the wheel. After failing field sobriety tests, Long was arrested. Long had an active bench warrant.
At the sheriff’s office, Long agreed to a breath test and posted samples of .30, .33 and .32. New Mexico law defines aggravated DWI to include a blood or breath alcohol concentration of 0.16 or higher, so the readings in Long’s case were far above the threshold that triggers the aggravated charge. Deputies booked him into the McKinley County Adult Detention Center on charges of aggravated DWI, driving while license revoked and no registration. His pretrial hearing was set for July 14.
The arrest came as McKinley County law enforcement prepared for another round of ENDWI checkpoints and saturation patrols running from July through September, using overtime grant funding from the New Mexico Department of Transportation Traffic Safety Division.
In New Mexico Department of Health data, excessive alcohol use led to about 226 deaths in McKinley County in 2021, alcohol-related deaths rose 70% since 2000, and the county had the highest alcohol-related death rate in New Mexico that year. State health data from 2013 to 2023 put McKinley and Rio Arriba counties at the highest total alcohol-related death rates in the state. The University of New Mexico’s DWI crash reporting program tracks alcohol-involved crashes, fatalities, injuries, arrests and convictions statewide.
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