GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Grand Junction firefighters and paramedics quickly put the bleeding, pregnant woman into an ambulance with the help of police Officer Colin Daugherty.
Daugherty shut the doors of the ambulance and stepped back, waiting for it to speed away as it typically does.
Nothing happened. The ambulance remained.
Daugherty, 29, who has been on the Grand Junction police force for about 18 months, reopened the doors and looked inside.
“They were all intense just working on her,” Daugherty recalled of the paramedics trying to save the woman and her fetus. “I ended up jumping in the ambulance and drove to the hospital while they kept working in the back.”
Anna Marie Macias, 23, was shot in the neck Sunday night by Lonnie Ray Herrera, 39, according to court documents. She died at the hospital.
Macias was gunned down in front of two of her children, according to an arrest affidavit, and then dragged by a van as Herrera fled the the scene.
On Feb. 19, police were called to the couple’s home on a domestic-violence complaint. Police found that Macias had a red welt on the corner of her left eye, swelling above her right eye and a bleeding cut on the top of her head, according to an affidavit in a pending assault case.
Macias told police she had gotten into an argument with Herrera, who had been drinking rum, and he attacked her from behind, punching her with a closed fist when she tried to leave the home, the assault affidavit said.
When police arrived at the home, Herrera had already left.
Police contacted Herrera by phone, but he hung up on the officer, the affidavit said.
On Sunday, Herrera drove Macias and her two children, 9 and 4, to a remote area and fired shots into the air, the murder affidavit said.
He later drove back to Grand Junction, dropping Macias and the two kids off near 26th Street and Belford Avenue, where he shot Macias in the neck, the affidavit said.
Macias’ third-trimester fetus was delivered at St. Mary’s Hospital by cesarean section.
The baby possibly suffered “brain damage due to complications resulting from Anna’s injuries,” according to court documents. “Doctors told the family they were unsure if the baby would survive.”
Herrera is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com
