Santa Fe woman arrested after fentanyl crash into hotel room
An SUV struck an unoccupied Econo Lodge Inn room on Cerrillos Road after police say Mersi Gonzalez Zamorano mistook fentanyl for meth. She was found unconscious behind the wheel.
A 29-year-old Santa Fe woman was arrested after police said her SUV crashed into an unoccupied room at the Econo Lodge Inn on Cerrillos Road after she mistook fentanyl for meth. Mersi Gonzalez Zamorano faces charges including DWI, possession of fentanyl and careless driving.
Santa Fe police said the crash happened at about 10:42 a.m. after the Santa Fe Regional Emergency Communications Center got a call about a vehicle hitting the hotel. Officers found Zamorano alone and unconscious in the driver’s seat after the collision. The SUV first hit a light pole before striking the hotel, and body camera video captured the aftermath.
The crash put the danger of fentanyl use into a place that normally holds travelers, workers and bystanders rather than just the person using the drug. Police said the hotel room that was hit was unoccupied, which kept the collision from turning into a mass-casualty event.
The case also landed in a part of Santa Fe that has drawn repeated law-enforcement attention around hotel-based drug activity. Later, Santa Fe police, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, SWAT and K9 teams served a search warrant at Hotel Inn Santa Fe, 3011 Cerrillos Road, where investigators believed traffickers were distributing fentanyl in the area of the hotel and from a hotel room. For city police, the Zamorano arrest added another crash tied to fentanyl to a corridor already under scrutiny.
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