State police officer charged with rape in Las Vegas, N.M.

Feb. 15—A New Mexico State Police officer faces a second-degree rape charge and has been placed on administrative leave after a woman accused him of assaulting her at his home in Las Vegas, N.M., late Saturday night while she was unconscious.

State police announced the charge against Sgt. Kevin Keiner in a news release Wednesday and said Chief Tim Johnson had placed Keiner, 31, on leave immediately after the state agency learned of an investigation by Las Vegas police. Johnson also launched an internal investigation into Keiner, a seven-year veteran of the force, the news release said.

"Law enforcement officers are held to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism, and any act of misconduct by an officer erodes the confidence that the public has placed in us," Johnson said in a statement. "The New Mexico State Police will fully cooperate with the investigation."

Online court records indicate Keiner had not been arrested by Wednesday evening.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit filed Wednesday in San Miguel County Magistrate Court, the woman told Las Vegas police she had gotten into an argument with her brother at her home after a night of drinking, and he pushed her to the ground. She called Keiner, whom she had known for several years, to help her file a report of the incident, and he arrived in his patrol car and in uniform, she said.

Instead of taking the woman to the state police office in Las Vegas, however, Keiner drove her to his home, where he directed her to shower and "sober up," she told an investigator. He got into the shower with her, she said, adding he gave her a shirt and a blanket after the shower, and then she "blacked out."

The affidavit says the woman told investigators she awoke to discover Keiner was raping her. She tried to leave his home, but he blocked the door, she said.

She recorded a conversation with Keiner on her cellphone in which she pleads with him to let her leave and admonishes him, according to the affidavit.

"No, Kevin I don't trust you, just let me out the front door, I will walk home. The worst has already happened to me, I already got raped so what the [expletive] else is going to happen to me," she said, according to a transcript of the conversation.

Keiner finally let her go, the affidavit says, and a friend picked her up nearby and took her home. She spoke with a Las Vegas police officer, who took her to the emergency room at Alta Vista Regional Hospital, where she was interviewed by an investigator around 3 a.m. Sunday.

The woman later went to a medical facility in Santa Fe for a sexual assault nurse examination, the investigator wrote in his report.

The investigator interviewed Keiner about an hour later at the Las Vegas Police Department, according to the affidavit. Keiner said he and the woman had communicated earlier in the day and planned to meet that night after his shift. He denied she had asked for his help filing a police report.

According to the affidavit, Keiner told the investigator the woman "did not want to get her brother ... in trouble."

She was experiencing anxiety, which is why he suggested she take a shower, Keiner told the investigator. He described a consensual sexual encounter between the two, though he said they had never had sex previously.

He downplayed the woman's level of intoxication during the incident, according to the affidavit, and said he believed she was accusing him of rape "because she is mad at him for being like the other guys," the affidavit says. "Kevin also states that [the woman] has found out that there is another girl that he is talking to."

In a follow-up interview Monday, the woman told the investigator she'd had four mixed drinks containing tequila at a bar the night of the incident and one shot of liquor at her residence, and said she vomited at Keiner's home.

Other witnesses confirmed the woman was intoxicated Saturday night, the investigator wrote.

The woman's roommate told police in an interview Monday he was "under the impression that a police report was going to be filed with Kevin," who was in his patrol car and wearing his uniform when he arrived to pick up the woman after the fight with her brother.

An hour later, the roommate said, she called for a ride and he picked her up on a street not far from Keiner's home.