Mystery Solved! Yahoo!!

Transient Leaves Freeway Camp

By Laura Nesbitt

Mountain View Telegraph

Homeless Johnny, who lived in a tent about 20 feet away from Interstate 40 in Moriarty for about three months, has moved on.

Rubin Garcia, a District 5 traffic engineer with the New Mexico Department of Transportation, said Wednesday he had asked his maintenance patrol foreman in Moriarty to ask Johnny to leave. Apparently he did.

In an interview Wednesday outside the McDonald's restaurant in Moriarty, Johnny said "a bunch of cops" showed up Tuesday and asked him to move on. He claimed to have moved to Shetland Street, about four miles east of Moriarty.

If the city had complaints about Johnny's freeway camp, they were not voiced too loudly. Katy Tapia, Moriarty Police Department administrative assistant and administrator of the Moriarty Traveler's Aid Program, said last week that Johnny had not contacted her for assistance and she had not received any complaints from the public.

"I didn't even know there were two tents out there," Tapia said. If any complaints were made to the city, they would have gone through Sheila Murphy, Moriarty zoning administrator. Murphy hasn't heard anything about Johnny, either.

NMDOT spokeswoman Karyn Lujan, however, said last week the highway department was aware of Johnny's camp. "Between State Police and DOT, we're trying to coordinate an effort to ask them to vacate that area," Lujan said. "All we can do is ask State Police to ask them to leave and we are in the process of doing that."

Garcia said that July 27 was the first time he told Johnny it was time to move on. "He mentioned that no one was complaining," Garcia said. "But the state is complaining. We don't want to be responsible for people getting run over. We have a policy."

In an interview Friday, Johnny had said a law enforcement officer came by about two weeks ago and gave him two weeks to leave. "You're lucky you've got a place to go to," Johnny said from his now-empty campsite. "Most of these people out here don't. They're trying to get a life."

Moriarty Mayor Adan Encinias said he believes the problem is a disturbing social issue. "Moving them on to another city is like shooing them away," Encinias said in a phone interview last week. "It's unfair for me to comment when I have a roof over my head. I need an alternative plan and I don't have one." Two established aid programs exist in Moriarty for transients or travelers who need assistance:

Bethel Community Storehouse, on N.M. 41 about a mile south of Interstate 40, 832-6642.
Moriarty Traveler's Aid Program, administered through the police department, 832-6060.

Johnny and Angel, a friend who also lived at the camp for a time, left a sign at their vacated campsite: "I-40, the road to everywhere, or maybe to nowhere."