A Texas man faces felony charges after, police say, he battered his girlfriend and drove off in her car outside a gas station in Santa Fe.
Santa Fe police arrested Christopher Kenney, 44, at a house in Eldorado Thursday night, and he was booked into Santa Fe County jail.
Officers were dispatched at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday to a Chevron gas station on St. Francis Drive in response to a report of a robbery — a woman told police Kenney had taken off with her car, with her two dogs and purse inside.
The woman told police she had picked up Kenney from Austin, Texas, in recent days, and the two had arrived Wednesday at his parents’ home in Eldorado, according to a probable cause statement filed by police. The two were sitting in her car outside the gas station Thursday when they began to argue about Kenney’s drinking and she told him to get out of the car, she told officers.
The woman said Kenney then grabbed her hair and dragged her across the center console of the car and out of the passenger-side door, police wrote. She said he then jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off in her car, “nearly running her over as she moved out of the way to avoid being struck,” the statement says.
Officers found the woman’s vehicle — and Kenney — at his parents’ house in Eldorado, police wrote. Kenney told police the two had argued in the car outside the gas station, but that his girlfriend had gotten out of the car and he jumped into the driver’s seat and drove off.
Police noted, however, the woman had “large areas of redness and scratches deep enough to draw blood” as well as “a large chunk of hair hanging from one of [the woman’s] bracelets.”
The woman told police she did not want to pursue charges against Kenney, but officers determined “an arrest was both reasonable and necessary in order to protect her from further domestic abuse,” police wrote in the statement.
Kenney faces charges of robbery, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, battery against a household member, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and receiving or transferring stolen motor vehicles, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
Kenney was scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Friday, but prosecutors requested for the hearing to be delayed to determine whether to request for Kenney to be held in jail pending a trial on the charges.