Driver chases hit-and-runner

Jonni Chavez poses by her car Thursday, July 31. After being involved in a hit-and-run accident Friday July 25, Chavez chased the other motorist throughout Gallup until police apprehended the suspect. [photo by Cable Hoover / Independent]

By Philip Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — Anyone who drives here knows about the trains — the sometimes frustrating wait when one crosses an intersection, scores of vehicles queued and idling, drivers mentally cursing the inconvenience while their fingers tap out the tunes on the radio.

Jonni Chavez motored into just such a row of waiting automobiles on Allison Road Friday, July 25, at about 4:30 p.m. She stopped, pushed her gearshift to “Park,” and fiddled with her thumb drive.

Something jolted Chavez against the headrest and the seat belt locked across her torso. She glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a white minivan pulling away from her fiberglass bumper.

She stepped out of the car to talk to the minivan’s driver but he was already backing up, then forward again to go around the passenger side of her car.

“It all happened really fast ... I’d been there maybe two minutes,” she said. “I just couldn’t understand why somebody would run away.”

What she later discovered is that the driver, 25-year-old Derrick Begay, had a blood-alcohol level of .32 — quadruple the legal limit — and the van, which had Arizona plates, was a company vehicle.

She got back in her car, dialed 911 and then lit out after the white minivan — a pursuit that led her half way around Gallup. At one point she said she lost him and stopped to ask a pedestrian if he had seen the van. He hadn’t. But soon it appeared, just a few feet down the road and heading toward her. The driver slowed, Chavez said. She stepped toward him and told him police were on their way, but the van never stopped and the side-view mirror struck her hand.

“I jumped back in my car and followed him into the Shop ‘n’ Save parking lot,” Chavez said.

The adjacent fueling station had a line of cars that forced the van off the right of way, jumping over yellow-painted parking blocks, Chavez said. She stopped and exclaimed loudly to the line of drivers that the van had hit her car and she needed to get through. They replied with encouraging remarks and moved out of her way.

Meanwhile, the 911 operator, who had repeatedly suggested that Chavez stop her pursuit because police were on their way, mistook Chavez’s excited yelling.

“Ma’am, don’t yell at me,” she said, according to Chavez.
“I’m not ...” Chavez lost reception.

The chase continued through Stagecoach, back onto Aztec and up to 491, then south to 602, turning onto Nizhoni, past the fire department, turning again onto Second Street.
“We took a nice little jaunt around Gallup,” Chavez said.

By this time she’s back on the line with 911 and both city and county officers are vectoring in on the white minivan.

They get back onto Second Street, then Nizhoni, then 491; finally the van pulls into the back parking lot behind R&M Furniture where police corner it.
Chavez parked her car and when Sargent Mumford came over to check if she was injured, she was crying.
“The police were really nice,” she said. “And the 911 operators were very helpful and attentive.”

Fortunately Chavez was not seriously injured. Her car sustained minor damage to the rear bumper and the stereo cuts in and out.

“I know you’re all shook up,” Sargent Mumford of McKinley County Sheriffs Department said as he approached her window. “Just picture this guy eating bologna sandwiches.”