Santa Fe police release report on Sunday fatal shooting

Sep. 24—A person shot and killed by Santa Fe police Sunday had advanced toward two officers — one of whom was holding both a gun and a stun gun — while holding a box cutter, the officers say.

Reports released by the city on Tuesday provide more details about the agency's third shooting of the month, in which 33-year-old Gracen Coon was killed after police and emergency workers were dispatched to their home in response to an emergency call from Coon's wife categorized by dispatchers as "psychiatric/abnormal behavior."

Santa Fe police officers Charles Ovalle and David Gallegos were the only two officers at the scene during the incident, the reports state. It isn't clear from reports and statements from police whether one or both of them fired at Coon, but both were aiming guns during the incident and both were put on standard administrative leave after the shooting.

Police referred to Coon in reports by their legal name, noting the deceased "identified as male" but had not yet gone through the legal process to change their name and gender. A close acquaintance of Coon's has said they preferred gender-neutral pronouns.

The dispatch center received the emergency call from Coon's wife at about 6 a.m. Sunday and relayed that "the couple was arguing" in the residence and that her husband had a box cutter. As Ovalle and Gallegos were about to arrive at the house, dispatchers said Coon's wife "was no longer communicating with them, and attempts to get her to leave the residence had been unsuccessful." When officers arrived, dispatchers told them "it sounded like the argument had become physical."

Officer Dianna Conklin wrote she watched the incident unfold from the police station via a livestream of Gallegos' body camera. Ovalle knocked on the front door of the house and then opened it, her report says. Ovalle held out his gun and aimed it at the people inside the residence while Gallegos appeared to hold "his Taser in his left hand and handgun in his right hand."

"One or both of the occupants of the residence were yelling," Conklin wrote. "I was not able to tell if they were yelling at each other or the officers, but Officer Ovalle continued to give commands in a clear raised voice to one of the occupants. He told them to come outside and to drop what was in their hands. He gave the commands multiple times."

She wrote that at one point Coon stepped toward the officers and swung their right hand in the officers' direction, holding what Conklin assumed was a box cutter, based on reports from dispatchers. Conklin wrote that Coon "continued not to comply with officers, and I saw no indication that she would comply."

Another officer who viewed the body camera footage wrote in his report that three gunshots could be heard, and Coon then dropped to the ground. Medical personnel from the fire department "were in the area staging for the call since it was coded as psychiatric," Conklin wrote, adding "they arrived within moments of the shooting."

Another officer wrote he arrived after the shooting and led Coon's wife, who was "in a very emotional and shocked state," out of the home through the garage.

"In a state of high emotion, the female began to make statements of the male being aggressive and asking what occurred between officers and her husband," he wrote. Santa Fe police did not interview her, the report says, before New Mexico State Police took over the investigation, as is typical with a police shooting involving another agency.

A Santa Fe police evidence technician who collected Coon's clothing from the hospital noted in a report several dozen pills fell out of Coon's jean pocket, some of which appeared to be Quetiapine Fumarate, an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Conklin read a statement and a set of questions to Gallegos to elicit details about the incident, she wrote. Gallegos answered Coon "had been armed with a box cutter and a handgun at the time of the shooting."

Other reports indicate dispatchers relayed Coon had a box cutter or "utility knife."

Ovalle does not appear to have provided a statement to Santa Fe police after the shooting.

A different supervisor wrote he read the statement and questions to Ovalle later in the day back at the police department, but he was told not to provide a statement about the incident since the officers were no longer at the scene.

Ovalle and Gallegos have both been involved in other fatal shootings by Santa Fe police in recent years.

Ovalle fired his gun in a March shooting that killed a suspect in a residential neighborhood in Santa Fe. He was both shot — police have not confirmed by whom, although the publicly available evidence only points to police officers firing weapons at the scene — and bitten by a police dog in the same incident.

Gallegos fired a less-lethal beanbag launcher in the 2023 police shooting of John Eames, which occurred during a wellness check in an arroyo behind the 77-year-old's apartment complex. Police said Eames had taken a gun out of his pocket. He later died from his injuries.

Police use of force in both incidents was cleared as justified by First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altweis.