By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

Prosecutors are asking that a Los Alamos man, who was initially arrested for drunk driving, be held without bail after he allegedly attacked officers while at the Española police station and had to be sedated April 3 at the Española Hospital.

Española Police Officer Andrew O’Hara charged David Norman, 30, with: seven counts of assault on an officer, six counts of battery on an officer, two counts of attempt to disarm an officer and one count each of drunk driving, damage to property over $1,000, improper display of a registration plate and attempted escape from an officer.

Prosecutor Kent Wahlquist filed the motion on April 7 to have Norman held without bail. A combined preliminary and dangerousness hearing is set for April 21.

In addition to Norman’s alleged behavior while being detained, including threatening officers, banging his head on the wall and thrashing about when officers tried to handcuff him, Wahlquist wrote that prosecutors previously tried, and failed, to have him held without bail in a Santa Fe case last year. In that case, he was released after the victim, his ex-girlfriend, failed to appear for a preliminary hearing, but he pleaded guilty to charges of criminal damage to property and battery on an officer, a case he was on probation for when arrested on the drunk driving charge.

April 3 Arrest

O’Hara pulled over a black Kia because its license plate cover was covering its registration sticker at 8:26 p.m. He found the driver, Norman, smelled like alcohol, had slurred speech and bloodshot, watery eyes. He had Norman perform a series of field sobriety tests, which he failed, O’Hara wrote in a statement of probable cause.

At the Española Detention Center, he tried to get him to consent to an alcohol breath test, but Norman refused, telling O’Hara that he didn’t have to do anything without a lawyer present and that “his daughter is going to go to CYFD custody” and then called O’Hara a racial epithet, he wrote.

After asking O’Hara to move his handcuffs to the front of his body, which O’Hara refused and told Norman it was because he’s being so aggressive, Norman allegedly stood up, charged O’Hara with his head, kicked him, then ran for the exit. Officers stopped him at the door, he kicked O’Hara again, then kicked a jail guard. He then gave a breath sample, putting his blood alcohol level at 0.1, O’Hara wrote. The legal per se limit is 0.08.

While in a detention cell, he started knocking his head on the wall, rendering himself unconscious. Officers tried to help him and when they approached, he kicked them, tried to grab one officer’s gun, then the stun gun off the officer’s vest, before trying to bite him hard on the hand, O’Hara wrote.

“I entered the cage to assist the other officers and David started making comments that ‘you better hope I don’t get a hold of a gun, ill (sic) shoot you’ looking at me ‘and you’ while looking at Officer Quintana; ‘and you pussies’ looking at Officers Edmonds and Martinez,” O’Hara wrote. “David continued to kick and scream.”

He tried to head butt a guard who tried to put a helmet on him, then started kicking at officers again, shoved three of them and told them he was going to get a gun and kill everyone, O’Hara wrote.

Officers then used the “drive stun” mode on their stun guns, a method of pain compliance, by pushing the electrode to his leg, O’Hara wrote.

He was taken to the Española Hospital where staff gave him sedatives before he was taken to the Tierra Amarilla Detention Center, he wrote.