When Getting Out of Jail Means a Deadly Walk Home

Rebecca Jaramillo stepped out of the Santa Fe jail and into the cold one night in January 2021. After two days in a cell, she was free, but no one was there to pick her up. So, with a snowstorm coming, she began the long walk toward town.

The jail in Santa Fe, surrounded by barbed wire and tumbleweed, sits on a remote stretch of highway far from the city’s bustling plaza and historic churches. It is nearly two miles down the highway to the closest gas station, three miles to where a sidewalk starts and eight miles to the nearest homeless shelter.

Ms. Jaramillo, 33, made it only about a mile from the jail that night before she was hit by a sheriff’s deputy driving a police pickup truck at 57 miles per hour. Her body was thrown more than 100 feet, and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Ms. Jaramillo is one of several people who have died trying to make it home from the Santa Fe jail on foot in recent years. It is a walk that has been far more deadly than previously reported.

Rebecca Jaramillo, pictured in 2011, was killed in 2021 after being released from the Santa Fe jail.

Known officially as the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility, the jail was moved to its more remote location in 1998, and before long, local leaders took note of how dangerous the walk was, even as they did little to solve the sorun. As far back as 2002, county commissioners expressed concern someone could be struck.