SWAT Teams Search for Escapee After Attack on Woman in N.M.

SWAT teams searched a heavily wooded neighborhood south of Santa Fe on Wednesday for a convict who escaped with six prisoners on Independence Day, then attacked a woman resident and fled when she punched him in the mouth.

Capt. John Denko said it was possible but unlikely that armed robber David Gallegos, 33, escaped a police sweep after the break-in and physical assault.

Denko said that 26 members of a state police tactical team, backed by helicopters with heat-seeking infrared scopes, searched the dense pinon pine and chamisa shrubs surrounding Canoncito, a cluster of 20 to 25 homes on plots of several acres each in a valley about 20 miles south of Santa Fe.

Gallegos was among seven inmates who broke out of the Penitentiary of New Mexico North Facility on Saturday night.

Yvonne Garcia, 19, identified Gallegos as the man who kicked in the door of a Canoncito home Tuesday and then tried to sexually assault her when she refused to give him food. The intruder fled after Garcia, who was treated at a hospital for scratches and abrasions, “hit him a good one in the mouth and split his lip,” Santa Fe County sheriff’s detective Fernando Gallegos said.

Denko also said several burglaries, the finding of fingerprints and inmate clothing and other clues have convinced him that at least some of the other five inmates still at large were pinned down in the Santa Fe area by roadblocks and patrols. The prison lies about 14 miles south of Santa Fe.

Hector Torres, 33, serving 25 years for kidnaping and armed robbery, was recaptured Monday.