Looking for justice: Diné killed on roadway, family wants driver punished

TÓTA’

Audrey Benally has a strong voice, but a pained one.

Her mother was walking in Farmington when she was struck by a man who the police said was intoxicated and texting while driving.

The driver, Bradley William Harris, who was 39 years old at the time of the incident, was charged with aggravated DUI, DUI homicide, great bodily harm or death, immediate notice of accidents, according to the incident report from Farmington Police.

Benally said Harris was also charged with texting while driving.

Benally, who’s working on her mom’s case with a district attorney, said Harris could be charged with only three of the crimes and the other two charges could be dropped. This means he could serve only 25 years in prison.

“No one told him (Harris) to get behind the wheel,” 35-year-old Benally said in frustration. “No one told him to act irresponsibly and to smoke marijuana and to get behind the wheel and start drinking and driving.

“And to go get on the road and hurt somebody and take their life,” she said. “For all five charges, he should be responsible for all those, not just give him three charges and take the other two away.”

Benally said she had wanted Harris to serve the maximum sentence allowed by law and that she hoped the federal charges could bring a life sentence.

She and her siblings want justice, they want their voices heard to show that systemic racism, discrimination and injustice cause outsized harm.

And they want people to stop taking down their mother’s memorial.

“My mom’s not a dog,” Benally said. “She didn’t ask to die this way. She didn’t ask to be killed on the road. She was minding her own business.

“She wasn’t hurting anybody,” she added. “It’s not against the law to walk on the side of the road (and) to cross the street.”

Night of incident

Benally’s mother, Teresa Mae Smith, 52, died after being hit by Harris at E. 20th St. and Brookside Drive in Farmington, according to the police incident report. The fatal incident happened around 11:31 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2020.

Today at the site near Farmington High there is a memorial of flowers, a cross and signs.

Benally isn’t quite sure where her mother was walking to that night. It’s possible she was walking to her daughter’s home.

Benally and her siblings still question why their mother was walking in that part of town and how she got there. No one knows.

“To this day, we’re trying to figure out why she walked that way because she doesn’t know anybody here in Farmington,” Benally explained. “We have no family here. She doesn’t just take off anywhere. She goes only between mine and my sister’s house.”

Benally said two Farmington Police officers knocked on her door on the morning of Oct. 7, 2020, to inform her of the incident and her mother’s death.

“I said I don’t think there’s any way, ‘You’ve probably got the wrong person,’” Benally explained. “They (officers) said she didn’t make it and she was hit.”

Farmington Police got a call about a “body on the side of the road” in an area near the high school. Police officers found Smith’s body on the road at the intersection. Emergency medical technicians arrived on scene and confirmed the death.

A man who identified himself as Harris’s father said his son returned home saying, “He thinks he may have hit someone” between North Western Avenue and North Dustin Avenue.

Then the father left and drove to the scene where he discovered a “body in the middle of the roadway and called police.” He waited for first responders to arrive.

The man later told police his son was texting and driving. He told police his son had returned home 15 minutes earlier and said he (Harris) thinks he hit something, or someone based on the damage of the vehicle, according to the report.

Police found Harris at a residence in the 1800 block of Western Avenue, where a Chevy Captiva – registered to Harris’s mother – was found with heavy damage to the front bumper area and the hood.

Slurring words, bloodshot eyes

Police stated in the report that Harris was slurring his words and had bloodshot eyes during their contact with him at the residence.

Harris told police he stopped and looked around from inside the vehicle but didn’t see anything – because he was texting – and drove home.

He also told police he consumed two 16-ounce Modelo beers around 3 p.m. and later smoked marijuana around 5 p.m. Harris told the police twice he had smoked marijuana.

Harris didn’t want to answer any more questions by the police and requested an attorney, then refused a sobriety test.

He was arrested and booked into the San Juan County Adult Detention Center where he told a woman he was incarcerated for vehicular manslaughter.

The woman said she may have overheard Harris talking on the phone telling the listener, “I killed somebody tonight,” according to the report.

“The person who killed her is free,” Benally said. “I don’t know if she was alive, or she had passed on when he hit her. But he ended up leaving her there.

“From the day she passed up until now, he’s free,” she added. “And he got out (of jail) in less than 24 hours after he killed her.”

Benally said trying to deal with her case as a Diné woman is extremely difficult because she feels she’s not being heard or taken seriously, and that causes raw anger.

“I don’t know who to turn to,” she said. “It’s frustrating. (Attorneys) think she’s just another case file or she’s just another Navajo or she’s just another drunk Navajo.”

And if it was a white person, the case would receive sympathy and the public would be invested, playing a part in the white damsel ideology.

But it’s not like that for Native Americans, said Benally, who along with her siblings, had to buy cleaning supplies to clean up their mother’s blood off the roadway at the crime scene.

People have been tearing down the memorial of flowers and the signs at the site near the high school, said Benally.

One day she found pieces of the handmade signs she and her siblings created and the flower petals scattered all over the area.

“Everything was just damaged,” she said. “The police told me there isn’t anything they can do about it.”

Benally and her siblings want an apology from the person or people who did that and who continue to do that.

Teresa Mae

Teresa Mae Smith was talkative, and she had a good sense of humor, said Benally.

Smith had many friends and wasn’t a stranger to anyone. She resided in Gallup with her husband, Benally’s stepfather.

“She had this loud laugh,” Benally said. “She was sometimes sarcastic, and she spoke her mind. She wasn’t scared. She had a good personality and was very strong-minded. She was a strong woman.”

And she loved her seven children fiercely and didn’t want them to give up on their dreams and to always finish what they start. But she was also sad and carried pain because two of her sons had passed on.

“I think she was emotionally drained, and she was depressed – falling apart inside,” Benally explained. “But she always told us she loved us no matter what, and that we are her pride and joy. She loved us more than anything in the world. She did all she could for us.”

Benally said her mother also was a vehicle technician and maintained her own vehicle. This made her unique.

“She was always happy, but I knew that … she was hurting inside,” Benally added.

A hearing for Harris is set for Jan. 7, 2022.

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