Farmington teen faces felony charges after reckless Kirtland Central stunt

A late-night stunt in the Kirtland Central High School parking lot has become a felony case for Katrina Henry, 18, of Farmington, after investigators say she drove recklessly past students and crashed into a barrier on campus.

Henry faces two counts of third-degree felony abuse of a child and two counts of fourth-degree felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor, along with a reckless-driving allegation, after the April 5 incident at the Kirtland school at 550 CR 6100. The school serves about 704 students in grades 9 through 12, and the incident drew immediate attention from staff at the campus, including agriculture teacher and FFA adviser Zane Webster.

The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office was called around 8:35 p.m. after Webster heard screaming outside the agriculture building and went out to see what was happening. Deputies say Webster watched a black GMC Terrain speed through the lot and spin in circles while four people sat on the window ledges and leaned their upper bodies out of the moving vehicle.

Investigators say the SUV hit a speed bump, caught air and then struck a cable barrier that separated the bus-loading area from the parking lot. Webster’s video, along with school surveillance cameras, Flock license-plate readers and the Farmington Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, helped investigators track the vehicle after it left school property.

Farmington police describe the Real Time Crime Center as a cloud-based system that uses high-powered cameras to monitor streets and parks in real time, a capability that has become part of more local criminal investigations. In this case, that technology helped officers reconstruct what happened on campus and identify the vehicle.

Henry was later contacted at Piedra Vista High School, where she is a student, and she reportedly admitted she had been driving. She also reportedly told investigators she did not report the crash because it did not register to her as an accident.

Two other youths involved in the incident told investigators they were just hanging out and driving around, and said the collision happened as they tried to leave school property. New Mexico law defines abuse of a child broadly as placing a child in a situation that may endanger the child’s life or health, and state law treats contributing to the delinquency of a minor as a fourth-degree felony.

Henry was arrested April 15, booked into the detention center and later released on her own recognizance. Her preliminary examination is set for 8:30 a.m. April 30 in Farmington Magistrate Court, the next step in a case that turns a school parking-lot stunt into a felony prosecution.