A dead body was discovered in a retaining pond at the Wastewater Treatment Plant on the west side of Gallup at 800 Sweetwater Place on April 13.

When Gallup Police officers  arrived they were shown to the body by the man who called in the incident. It was on the north side of Sanostee Drive at the bottom of a retaining pond that is no longer in use.

The Gallup Fire Department assisted detectives in recovering the body.

The body was identified as that of Ferlin Yazzie, 35, of Yatahey, a Native American man. The investigation is ongoing.

A 29-year-old man on a bike was shot in the parking lot of the America’s Best Value Inn at 2003 W. Historic Hwy. 66 in Gallup at 7:20 pm May 5.

Reports from the Gallup Police Department indicate the man, identified as Kyle Sands was with three other bicyclists, two male and one female, when a car with tinted windows which could have been gray, silver, or black appeared.

A man at a nearby Lotaburger said he heard a shot and one of the men on one of the bikes fell.

His description to Officer Alana Bradley said the two males and the female left westbound in the gray car on Highway 66. He described the males as wearing white shirts and the female as skinny and in a gray...

Mckyale Tso

Dec. 16, 2:39 am

DWI

New Mexico State Police Officer Alejandro Solis-Torres was patrolling eastbound on Highway 264 near mile post 16 when he saw a red pickup truck traveling westbound with only one headlight. Solis-Torres turned to follow the truck, activating his unit’s emergency equipment to conduct a traffic stop.

The truck turned north onto a dirt road covered in snow and attempted to flee, but the driver lost control and crashed into a berm alongside the road. The driver, later identified as Mckyale Tso, 24, of Mexican Springs, N.M., got out and tried to run, but he was apprehended by Solis-Torres.

The report stated Tso smelled of alcohol. He was arrested for...

PART TWO: The longstanding link between water and health

Nothing comes without water. The tribal housing authority won’t build homes if there’s no water to plumb them. Schools, health clinics, administrative offices, restaurants, and businesses cannot be constructed or continue to operate without it.

“A homeland for the Navajo people is not merely a piece of land between our four sacred mountains, but is a place where our culture, our language, and our way of life and our people can live and grow,” former Navajo Nation president Joe Shirley, Jr. testified to Congress in 2007. “Without water, viable economic and social communities wither and die.”

The first U.S. Public...