Today's News

A man charged with inappropriately touching seven underage victims and hurting an adult pleaded guilty to most of the crimes Tuesday.

But Clifford Gutierrez, 34, of Cleveland, N.M., didn’t get any prison time — a decision the victims’ families apparently supported.

Under the terms of a plea agreement, Gutierrez will serve at least five years of probation and must live in Albuquerque-based Bernalillo County or suburban Sandoval County. He also must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Students in Nina Melendrez’s third-grade class at Paul D. Henry Elementary are becoming junior paleontologists by learning about dinosaurs, their habitat and the time they walked the earth.

“Kids will always be interested in dinosaurs. It doesn’t matter how young or how old they are. The love it; it’s such a high interest topic that you can do anything and everything with it,” Melendrez said.

Christina Padilla studied the allosaurus and will write a report and give an oral presentation on the giant reptile.

A man upset that his girlfriend had broken up with him is accused in a weekend drive-by shooting, police said.

Mario Baca, 20, 1409 Seventh St., was arrested on charges of shooting at a dwelling and aggravated battery, Police Chief Gary Gold said.

Shortly before 11 p.m. Sunday, Baca shot into a house in the 900 block of Pecos Street, hitting a man who was on his couch, Gold said.

Police said Baca became enraged that his girlfriend had ended their relationship, and he believed that a man in the Pecos Street house had been seeing his girlfriend.

A former professor and author told a crowd of dozens last week about her obstacles in promoting the Spanish language.

Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, a Harding County native, spoke as part of the Highlands University Department of Humanities lecture series on Chicano literature.

Following introductions, Gonzales-Berry related themes of language and society, crossing the color line, and the loneliness and alienation associated with these issues, in the context of her role as a writer.