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| NM Inmate's Escape Ends in Suicide |
| By Albuquerque Journal |
| Published: 05/10/2001 |
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An El Paso federal prison inmate's escape attempt ended when he committed suicide Tuesday morning as he fled south on Interstate 10 pursued by a phalanx of police cars from Las Cruces. The La Tuna Federal Correctional Institute inmate, Mexican national Oswaldo Nava, 37, was declared dead at Thomason Hospital in El Paso about two hours after the midmorning chase. Nava, convicted in Maryland, had 15 years to serve on a 21-year prison sentence for selling cocaine, said La Tuna spokeswoman Daisy Crockett. With the aid of an accomplice later taken into custody in El Paso, Nava used a Tuesday morning visit to a Las Cruces dental office to make his escape. Nava and an armed accomplice overpowered the inmate's escorts, an unarmed officer and a physician's assistant as Nava left the dental offices. At least one shot was fired, prompting several quick calls to alert local authorities about the escape, said Las Cruces Police spokesman Sgt. Todd Gregory. Nava, then armed with a semiautomatic pistol, took his two escorts hostage and fled in the federal prison van while his accomplice fled alone in a brown-and-white pickup. The two vehicles headed west on University Boulevard near New Mexico State University and then took the Interstate 25 entrance south to I-10 and El Paso, Gregory said. Spike strips placed on the roadway punctured the prison van's tires about 10 miles south of Las Cruces near Vado. The van eventually slowed to about 15 mph, Gregory said, 'and that's when he shot himself and the van just kind of veered off to the right, hit the shoulder and then a barbed-wire fence.' The two La Tuna employees taken hostage were not injured. 'We're very pleased with the outcome,' Gregory said, 'that it didn't lead to any tragedy or anything.' Nava's alleged accomplice, Roberto Montoya, was taken into custody by El Paso sheriff's deputies after a spike strip flattened three tires on the pickup. Cruz said FBI investigators would try to determine how Nava's accomplice knew about the time and location of the inmate's dental appointment. La Tuna, with 1,049 federal inmates on El Paso's north side, has dental staff, but Nava required surgery that could only be performed by a surgeon outside the prison, Crockett said. Under standard prison measures, inmates are not told when or where outside medical appointments are scheduled, La Luna spokesman Crockett said. 'That's why this is under investigation,' he said. |
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