Naked man has little to hide from police

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — Police arrested a man Wednesday who allegedly trapped a woman inside a trailer and choked her.

Patrick Bahe, 41, was arrested about 1:45 a.m. after residents at Hillcrest Trailer Park reported a domestic dispute inside one of the trailers, according to Gallup Police Officer William Velasquez’s report.

According to the report, Velasquez, along with Gallup Police Officer Andrew Antone, knocked on the front door of the trailer for two minutes without a response. They went to the back door and knocked again for several minutes, but this time they heard a woman screaming for help. They forced entry through the front door and yelled out in order for anyone inside to hear that police had entered. They still heard the woman screaming.

“She was screaming ‘help me’ very loudly,” the report reads.

Once inside the officers first met with Bahe, who was naked and drunk, according to the report. When told to get on the ground, Bahe ignored the police, prompting them to take him down by force.

“I noticed (the victim) was also naked and lying in the bed in one of the rooms yelling to Officer Antone and I: “help me, he’s going to kill me,” the report reads.

The victim told police that she had come home from work at 8 p.m., but Bahe wasn’t home. He walked in about midnight, drunk, and started to yell at and push the victim, according to the report. To assuage his anger, the victim invited Bahe to bed. She told police she was naked when he arrived by her own choice, that both she and Bahe sleep in the nude.

The victim told police Bahe agreed to go to bed with the her, but once inside the bedroom he again yelled at her, and started choking her and held her down against her will ... she said this continued until police arrived.

Bahe failed to give police his name, so he was charged with concealing identity. He also faces one count each of battery on a household member, false imprisonment and resisting arrest. A look at Bahe’s priors reveals similar charges — battery on a household member in tandem with false imprisonment — from January 2000. Bahe also violated a protection order last year, according to court records.

Reporter Phil Stake can be reached at philip.stake@gmail.com, or by calling (505) 863-6811 x223.