By Vic Vela
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE — It was just another Friday at the office for Santa Fe cholesterol specialist Dr. James D. Mickle Jr. — at least until the SWAT team showed up.
“I come out with my hands up and I’m saying, ‘There’s nothing in there, maybe an X-ray view box,’ ” joked Mickle with the Journal.
But police weren’t looking for Mickle — they were after his patient, Scott Powell, who they believe is the guy in a nightshirt who became an Internet sensation through a video of him firing about five rounds into a speed enforcement van on April 11.
Mickle said Powell told him, “They think I look like the guy who shot up the speed van. But I look like a lot of guys.”
Powell, 63, surrendered peacefully to officers outside Mickle’s Calle Medico office Friday morning following a bizarre chain of events that included an earlier 911 call from another medical office and a police pursuit of Powell — aided by a State Police helicopter and tactical teams — that zig-zagged through town, sometimes at speeds up to 60 mph.
Powell knew police had an arrest warrant for him, and he had arranged to turn himself in to police before Friday’s pursuit began.
“I’m not sure how things got off the rails,” said his attorney, Dan Cron. “In the process of it all, Scott just panicked. But there was never any intention to avoid the warrant.”
Powell denied any involvement in the shooting during an interview with police earlier this week. But he did tell officers that he had recently been cited by the speed van and was unsuccessful in disputing the ticket. He said he was offered “no due process which was unconstitutional,” according to a Santa Fe police arrest warrant.
Powell — who lives about 3.5 miles from where the speed van was shot and has a girlfriend in the area — told police that he did approach the vehicle, thinking that someone was inside it, “with the intention of asking the driver to move it somewhere else as it had been parked there all day,” according to the arrest warrant.
Powell “expressed displeasure” with the “f lash that emits” from the van when it snaps a photograph of a speeding driver, the police statement reads.
‘Had him on camera’
Police, who received an anonymous tip identifying Powell as the possible van shooter, interviewed Powell on Monday, but didn’t arrest him.
“Even though he didn’t admit to what happened, we had him on camera,” said Santa Fe police Sgt. Andrea Dobyns. “We wanted to further investigate it and drafted an arrest warrant.”
That warrant was drafted Wednesday, and police knew Powell intended to turn himself in. They came to his home, 42 Sangre de Cristo Drive, on Friday morning to execute a search warrant related to the van shooting. Powell wasn’t home when police arrived, but later drove up to his residence in his green and blue Audi A6, according to Dobyns.
But Powell drove away, and police followed him through the gated community before losing sight of him off Bishop’s Lodge Road at about 9:35 a.m.
At 10:23 a.m., police dispatch received a 911 call from a doctor’s office in the 1100 block of St. Francis Drive. The caller said Powell had been knocking on the office door and expressed concern that he was suicidal. That’s when police ramped up their efforts to detain him.
“We didn’t know if he had a weapon, but he was suicidal at this point,” Dobyns said.
An officer saw Powell leaving the clinic that placed the 911 call and followed him through parts of downtown and the South Capitol neighborhood, before losing him around Galisteo and Don Fernando. The pursuit through residential areas reached speeds up to 60 mph, Dobyns said.
Finally, Powell was spotted about 11:30 a.m. entering Mickle’s office, 4 Calle Medico, suite C. Mickle told the Journal that Powell was a new patient who called him Monday to make an appointment, saying he “had some cholesterol problems.”
Powell, who was early for his noon appointment, told Mickle he “had to call his lawyer and cancel” when the doctor told him the exam would take about an hour and a half.
“Then he went outside and came back in and said, ‘Sorry, I can’t leave. The place is surrounded by police,’ ” Mickle said.
Mickle’s nurse, Linda Kowalski, told the Journal that “neither of us felt like we were threatened.” On the contrary, Mickle said that he and Powell “had a nice conversation about his bolo tie.”
After speaking with Cron, Powell walked out of a side door of the doctor’s office and surrendered to police.
Powell was booked into the Santa Fe County jail on charges of criminal damage to property and negligent use of a firearm for the van shooting, as well as for charges of aggravated fleeing of a law enforcement officer and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, because Powell allegedly drove at a detective during the pursuit, Dobyns said.
Cron would not comment on the charges, but said that his client has no criminal history and that it was never his intent to evade police.
As for Mickle and Kowalski, they had a day to remember. Kowalski is on a temporary assignment from Pennsylvania to help at Mickle’s Santa Fe office.
“I’ve only been here for a week,” she said. “I might have to extend it to ten years. It’s a very interesting place.”
“Now you can go back to Pennsylvania and tell them about the wild and woolly West,” the doctor told her.
Copyright 2012 Albuquerque Journal