Death stalks area couple
Crash 20 minutes after casino rebuff kills man

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

WILLIAMS ACRES — Twenty minutes before they crashed, Elizabeth and Kee Manygoats had been refused alcohol service because of their apparently drunken behavior.

Security at Fire Rock Casino called police to tell them to look for a drunken driver behind the wheel of a silver Dodge pickup. Police found the pickup in less than half an hour ... but not until after it had vaulted over a roadway killing a man and leaving a woman in critical condition.

Kee Manygoats, 42, was pronounced dead after the pickup in which he was a passenger crashed near New Mexico Highway 118 and Beta Street west of Gallup about 5:30 p.m. Monday, according to McKinley County Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Mumford’s report.

Elizabeth Manygoats, 36, was taken to Gallup Indian Medical Center with severe head and upper-torso injuries, before being flown to UNM Hospital in Albuquerque. She remained in critical condition Tuesday afternoon.

“No seat belts were used, evidence of alcohol use was present,” Mumford wrote in the incident report.

Mumford, who is a certified crash investigator for the county, said it is not apparent how fast the pickup had been going.

That determination will require further calculating, but a witness said it was “traveling at an excessive speed.”

Elizabeth had been driving west on N.M. 118, with Kee in the passenger seat, according to Mumford. She apparently lost control of the pickup, which then crossed the eastbound lane and ended up in the arroyo that runs alongside the road. The pickup collided with a cement wall built to support drainage culverts beneath Beta Street.

“She was driving in the ditch ... the witness said the truck was in the air ... it landed on the other side and never touched Beta Street,” Mumford said.

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