ABQjournal: Police Sued Over Deaths; No Reports Filed After Beatings:
Police were summoned time after time. Restraining orders were issued. One officer alone responded to more than 50 calls but filed only one report.
Increasingly emboldened and unchecked, Elias Chavez at one point planned to set his wife, Elaine Artiaga Chavez, on fire.
Instead, he repeatedly stabbed her in the head, wounding her. But he fatally stabbed her father and brother when they came to her defense.
A lawsuit filed by Elaine Artiaga Chavez and others lays out these allegations and contends that Los Lunas police and the Valencia County Sheriff's Department are responsible. They are seeking in excess of $10 million in damages.
If they had arrested and charged Chavez as he became increasingly abusive, the lawsuit contends, he would have been in jail on April 3, 2003. That's the day he stabbed Artiaga multiple times and killed her 71-year-old father, Paul, and 29-year-old brother, Jerome, who came to her defense, the lawsuit contends.
Bernalillo County District Judge Ted Baca began hearing evidence in the case on Monday. There is no jury.
The case was moved to Albuquerque after judges in the 13th Judicial District were recused.
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