Support Democrat Ernestina Cruz.



Or get a concussion.

Your choice.

The homeowner would not support Democrat judicial candidate Ernestina R. Cruz in Taos.

So they beat him bloody.

Officials with the Taos Police Department say they are still working to get to the bottom of the alleged beating of a Taos landowner over the removal of political signs from in front of his property.

In an interview with The Taos News Friday (May 25), property owner Roy Cunnyngham and his wife Joni recounted the events when they returned home, across from Casa los Córdovas May 1.

“I don’t know how many people hit me,” Cunnyngham said of the incident.

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According to the police report filed the same day, Eighth Judicial District Court judge candidate Ernestina Cruz was having a “meet and greet” event at Plaza de Colores. At the same time, across the street, Cunnyngham and his wife were returning home from dinner to find several of Cruz’ campaign signs in front of his property.

As in the police report, Cunnyngham confirmed that three men approached him and demanded that he replace the signs where they’d been staked. Cunnyngham said he resisted.

“We were setting them in the car and we’d planned to call whoever they belonged to,” Cunnyngham said. “I told them I thought it was very distasteful to put these signs in front of my property.”

At that point, a younger man came across the street and again told Cunnyngham to put the signs back. When Cunnyngham refused, the man “pounded me in the chest,” Cunnyngham said.

While Cunnyngham says he knows a few of the people involved, The Taos News’ policy is not to identify alleged offenders until they have been charged or implicated by law enforcement.

At the time of the incident, Cruz denied having any knowledge of anyone involved in the incident, saying that it was “unfortunate” that Cunnyngham removed signs that “did not belong to him.”

What followed was far from a fair fight, the Cunnynghams say. Cunnyngham was later checked out by a doctor who treated him for cuts and bruises, injuries to his mouth and a concussion, Cunnyngham said.

“They just attacked him, all three of them,” Joni Cunnyngham said. “Someone was keeping me and my son from getting to them.”