Fruitland man draws three-year sentence for assaulting girlfriend in 2022 incident
A Fruitland man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison after pleading guilty to an assault charge earlier this year in which his girlfriend was seriously injured.
Anderson Buck, 40, of Fruitland, a member of the Navajo Nation, pleaded guilty to assault resulting in serious bodily injury on April 28 in federal court. The charge stems from a Nov. 17, 2022, incident in which Buck and his girlfriend were drinking alcohol and driving around the area of Nenahnezad, according to court documents and a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico.
The release states that after his girlfriend passed out in the passenger seat of Buck’s vehicle, he drove to a friend’s house and left the woman while he went inside. Buck consumed more alcohol before leaving the house an hour later.
When he arrived back at his car, Buck tried to wake the woman before becoming frustrated and driving away, the release states. Buck’s friend reported the woman was unconscious and uninjured when the couple departed his house.
Buck and the woman arrived at his family’s compound approximately 30 minutes later, the release states, where one of Buck’s relatives came outside and saw Buck’s girlfriend slumped over in the car with a bloody face. When he was asked what had happened, Buck told his relative, “She was talking (expletive).” Buck’s relatives called the police, while Buck fled the compound on foot before police and medical personnel arrived at the scene.
After his mother later brought him in to be interviewed by law enforcement officials, Buck told authorities that he and his girlfriend had driven to an unknown residence, where three unknown women had beaten his girlfriend, the release states. But an investigation turned up evidence that the woman had been beaten in Buck’s vehicle, rendering his version of events inconsistent with that evidence.
Buck’s girlfriend was hospitalized in an intensive care unit for several weeks while suffering from a blown-out eye socket, brain bleeding and other injuries, according to the release. She later was released to a rehabilitation hospital, but she died on April 18, 2023, from a variety of maladies.
Buck entered his guilty plea 10 days later and was sentenced to three years and one month in prison, the release states. He will be subject to three yeas of supervised release after completing his sentence.
The case was investigated by the Farmington Resident Agency of the FBI and the Navajo Nation Department of Criminal Investigations.
Buck has a lengthy criminal history in addition to his most charge. Since 2003, he has been arrested four times for aggravated DWI or aggravated DUI, pleading guilty three times and being convicted once. He also pleased guilty in 2008 in Bernalillo County to aggravated battery on a police officer. Buck was sentenced to prison and probation in most of those cases, but in a 2014 case in Farmington Magistrate Court, he was entered into a treatment program at the Four Winds Recovery Center and sentenced to drive with an ignition interlock device for the rest of his life.
A June 2016 charge in Farmington Magistrate Court against Buck for criminal damage to property was dismissed.
Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.
This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Fruitland's Anderson Buck pleaded guilty to assault charge in April
