Deace: Sharia Jones’ life and senseless death should be front-page news

“I am desperate! I can't get anyone to cover this story. On August 17th, a drunk illegal alien crossed the median and struck my sister-in-law, Sharia Jones, head-on and killed her. My nephew was life-flighted 1.5 hours away and my niece was sent to a nearby hospital. My other two nephews were at home. My brother was in Texas on a fire call and had to wait over 12 hours until he could get a flight home and see his now motherless children.”

What you just read is the beginning of an email sent to me last week by Sarah Rodriquez, the loyal sister to a man living in Grants, New Mexico, whose life has been turned upside down. But you wouldn’t know that at all if you live in the area covered by the Cibola Citizen newspaper. Because as of this writing, nothing about a deadly accident involving a twice-deported illegal alien drunk driver has been reported in the local paper.

When Rodriquez called the Cibola Citizen on September 29 to find out why news of the deadly crash hadn’t appeared in the paper, the staff informed her they had not seen a report from the state police yet and per company policy would not publish anything until that happened. It is unclear whether they even knew about the accident at all.

So why hadn’t the New Mexico State Police issued a report more than a month after the accident, when a preliminary hearing on the matter had been originally scheduled for October 6? Nobody seems to know. And since the newspaper still had not received such a report as of Thursday, the state police don’t seem to care.

Through her brother’s conversation with a victim’s advocate and a member of the state police, along with Rodriquez’s own research, Rodriquez says the man who allegedly killed her sister-in-law is a 34-year-old Guatemalan national named David Belasquez-Gomez. He has previously been deported twice. The van he was allegedly driving while drunk at double the legal limit was registered to a company in North Carolina called Solar Panel Solutions LLC owned by one Rafael Ceron Santiago.

Again, the salient point here is that you likely knew none of this if you live in Grants, New Mexico. Because the state police have not issued a report and the Cibola Citizen has not written a story about it since Sharia Jones’ life was taken on August 17. Which means you also didn’t know that the preliminary hearing for case number D-1333-PD-202300013 was delayed this week so that a grand jury could convene behind closed doors on Friday with the state trooper conducting the investigation appearing as a witness.

If only the drunk driver had been Donald Trump, then everything would be out in the open and “justice” would be swift.

Back to real life, though. Isn’t the darkness that comes with such a senseless loss of life enough? Why the added indignity of refusing to acknowledge that the accident even happened at all? An accident where a dad had to pick up a call from a strange phone number because his injured daughter was calling him from an EMT’s cell phone to tell him “Mommy doesn’t look good.” Then the frantic three-hour drive to catch a flight back home, only to be called by police with the news that his wife had in fact died, and then having to decide which of his children to go see first: the two who were injured or the younger two left at home?

This isn’t just a story. This should be front-page news. But you haven’t read it yet, and Rodriquez worries that is because of the all-too-common reality these days that the rights and lives of actual Americans simply don’t matter any more. Illegal aliens matter more. Open borders matter more. Accountability and justice matter not at all, even if you spent your life serving your country and its government.

“My brother had 1.5 years left to go before he could retire with 30 years’ service to the federal government and the Bureau of Land Management,” Rodriquez told me. “He has been fighting forest fires for almost 30 years. He and Sharia celebrated 22 years of marriage this past May. Now he is alone.”

Rodriquez can’t do anything to change that, but she refuses to stand by and let justice pass her brother by if she can help it. So here is the number of the Cibola Citizen. Feel free to give the staff a call at (505) 287-3840 and ask them politely why Sharia Jones’ life and senseless death are not a story worth reporting.