Tag: Scott Dwight Habermehl

Blue skies, si; smiling at me, no

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Some mornings — maybe most mornings — eyeballing the news first thing is a real bad idea.

For openers, The Duck! City’s coppers told KOAT Action News that the 11-year-old suspect in Scott Habermehl’s death had already been considered “a danger to the community” thought to have a number of antisocial pasatiempos, among them “shooting one person, shooting at another person, as well as burglarizing multiple homes, vehicles, and a business.”

Next, a Las Cruces auto show turns into a shooting gallery. The body count varies wildly depending on your source of information, but The New York Times apparently had someone on the scene and counts maybe two dead and six injured.

It will tell you much about the state of today’s newspaper business that the Las Cruces Sun News had to run with a story from its El Paso cousin before finally getting its own report online around 8 this morning. Check out the staff directory. The El Paso Times now reports three dead and 14 wounded.

And finally, the DOGEbags are busting balloons over at NOAA, as John Fleck tells us in his latest wrecking-ball report.

Writes John: “Daily radiosonde launches from National Weather Service sites across the country, coordinated with similar launches at the same time around the world, provide critical data input to weather forecast models. While satellites and other data sources play an increasingly important role, the tried and true twice-a-day weather balloon launch provides the vital skeleton on which our weather forecasts depend. … The benefits of good weather forecasts vastly outweigh the costs of collecting and analyzing the data.”

‘Just bump him, bruh’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
The ghost bike installed by the Duke City Wheelmen in remembrance of Scott Dwight Habermehl.

“Just bump him, bruh.”

Sounds better than “Gonna hit him hella fast,” doesn’t it?

But the difference was no difference at all to cyclist Scott Dwight Habermehl, who last May was sent flying over the passenger side of a vehicle with three giggling kids in it — ages 15, 13, and 11 — and left fatally injured on the side of the road.

He was 63. Father of two. A Sandia National Labs engineer who was just cycling to work, as he had done for years.

Two of the three kids said to have been in the vehicle that hit him have been arrested, charged with an open count of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, leaving the scene of an accident involving great bodily harm or death, and unlawful possession of a handgun, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The eldest remains at large.

We’ve all been in this neighborhood. I’ve been right-hooked into a parked car; tumbled over the hood of an SUV whose driver passed me only to start executing a leisurely U-turn; narrowly escaped a homicidal trucker on a wide highway shoulder; had a full bottle of beer thrown at me from a speeding vehicle; been threatened with a gun.

The joke among longtime cyclists with a dark streak of humor is that if you want to murder someone without suffering any consequences, wait until your target gets on a bicycle and then hit him with your car.

But it doesn’t seem all that funny when you consider that two of these three suspects were charged — within days of the crash that killed Habermehl — in connection with what the Journal called “a weekslong crime spree that included a smash-and-grab burglary, shootings and auto theft.”

And yet nothing came of it.

The case against the 13-year-old was dismissed in August 2024 “when prosecutors failed to meet court requirements,” the Journal added. It’s not clear what happened to the charges against the 11-year-old.

Maybe prosecutors will “meet court requirements” in this instance, since (a) Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham have weighed in, and (2) we’re not talking about property crime now — this time, a man was sentenced to death by three children for the crime of riding his bicycle to work.

• Video: The Albuquerque Police Department provided this clip from a video said to have been uploaded to the Internets by those involved. APD says this triggered an anonymous tip, a homicide investigation, and what we can only hope will be justice for Scott Dwight Habermehl. Thank Dog for the stupidity of many of our 21st-century criminals. Back in the Day® we knew better than to rat ourselves out.

• Addendum: The third suspect is in custody.