By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

A Rio Arriba grand jury indicted a 63-year-old El Rito man for drunk driving sixth-offense, in a case originally filed in 2023.

The grand jury indicted Joey Jaramillo on Feb. 20 and he was arraigned on March 3. Jury selection is tentatively set for Aug. 10.

Jaramillo, in 2025, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of aggravated assault, with a conditional discharge and three years of supervised probation, following an incident on April 10, 2025, where he allegedly fired a gun during a dispute with his neighbors after his cattle got out of their pasture. During that incident, he told a deputy that he rated his drunkenness as a 4 out of 10, according to court documents.

The drunk driving case was initially filed on Sept. 11, 2023, dismissed on March 6, 2024, refiled on Nov. 5, 2025 and then indicted on Feb. 20.

Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Diaz wrote in a statement of probable cause for Jaramillo’s 2023 drunk driving arrest that another deputy pulled him over after he ran a red light at Paseo de Oñate and Fairview Lane. He pulled over near Private Drive 1515 and told Diaz he was a 5 out of 10 on the drunk scale.

After Jaramillo failed a series of field sobriety tests, Diaz arrested him and allowed one of Jaramillo’s family members to pick up his truck. In the truck, he saw two 12-oz. cans of Budweiser and an empty 375 ml. bottle of Fireball whiskey.

At the sheriff’s office, he blew a 0.21 and a 0.20. The legal per se blood alcohol limit is 0.08.

While Jaramillo agreed to plead guilty in the 2025 aggravated assault case, no plea hearing has been set and it is currently set for trial on June 15. It was previously set for trial on March 9, but that hearing was vacated.

Past arrests for Jaramillo are mostly for drunk driving, including a conviction for DWI fifth offense in 2011. In that case, his first name appears as Kenny instead of Joey.