SWAT standoff ends with arrest at Cabezon Storage facility

A SWAT team converged on Cabezon Storage along the Albuquerque-Rio Rancho border and kept Westside Boulevard closed for hours after officers tried to reach Joseph Howard, the facility manager who lived in a house above the storage site.

The operation unfolded Sunday, May 31, after the Albuquerque Police Department began investigating a domestic violence call in northwest Albuquerque. According to the complaint, a woman told police Howard assaulted and strangled her, and officers observed visible injuries to her neck. She also told police Howard took her cellphone when she tried to call 911, forced her to the floor, put his foot on the back of her head and threw alcohol in her face before she was able to secure the apartment and call for help.

Police then tried to contact Howard at Cabezon Storage with help from the Rio Rancho Police Department, but those efforts failed and the response escalated into a SWAT operation around 1:30 p.m. The standoff drew attention in a busy border corridor where access between Albuquerque and Rio Rancho was cut off during the afternoon.

Westside Boulevard was closed between Golf Course Boulevard in Albuquerque and Wellspring in Rio Rancho for hours, leaving drivers to reroute around one of the main connections between the two cities. That closure also affected the day-to-day activity around a commercial storage facility where tenants, employees and customers would normally be coming and going.

Police identified the suspect as Joseph Howard. KOB 4 reported that Howard worked as a manager at Cabezon Storage and lived above the business, and that records show he had a previous domestic violence charge in 2006. ABQ RAW reported Howard is 43 and from Albuquerque, and that the case was being pursued as domestic violence charges.

The arrest ended the standoff, but the incident raised immediate concerns for people along the Westside corridor about how quickly a domestic violence case can spill into a multi-agency police operation, shutting down a key roadway and disrupting a heavily used commercial site in the heart of the Albuquerque-Rio Rancho border area.