Fifteen years ago, El Paso County Commissioner Carlos Leon’s life was forever changed. On a 93-degree August day, the retired El Paso police chief decided to ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle from his Eastside home to Mesilla, New Mexico.
One moment, Leon was riding at 45 mph on New Mexico Highway 28, enjoying the shade of pecan trees. The next moment, he was staring at the sky, in excruciating pain.
A truck had pulled into Leon’s path, sending him flying over the hood of the truck. It would take Leon two years to rehabilitate from broken bones throughout his body. His memories of the crash are fleeting.
But because of a chance encounter that started with a former colleague shopping for a Corvette, Leon and his wife, Bonnie, were finally able to connect with the sheriff’s deputy who was the first responder to the accident. And the deputy, Jimmy Murillo, told Leon new details about the wreck that altered his life.
“It was so good to hear from him, to hear his voice, to see him and to shake his hand and tell him how much that meant to me that he cared enough,” Leon said in an interview with El Paso Matters Wednesday, three days after he and Bonnie met in Mesilla with Murillo and his wife, Marina.
From left, Carlos Leon, Bonnie Leon, Marina Murillo, and Jimmy Murillo meet in Mesilla, New Mexico on Sunday July 21. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
The accident happened Aug. 26, 2009, a Wednesday. Leon had retired as El Paso police chief six years earlier. He was serving as a consultant for other law enforcement agencies and had spent a few weeks in Oakland. He told Bonnie he wanted to ride his new Harley up to Mesilla.
“And when I pulled out of the garage, I felt that I had a big helmet on. And it was a hot day and I’m thinking, maybe I had to go back and get my half helmet, which is cooler. But I thought, nah, I was too lazy,” Leon said.
It was the first of several decisions that day that may have been the difference between life and death.
Leon has few memories of the wreck or the immediate aftermath. His strongest memory is a spiritual one.
“At that time, everything was broken. My shoulders, my face, ribs. The only thing that wasn’t broken was my right leg,” he said. “And I remember all of a sudden I was on my feet. I was on my feet looking at my dad, who had passed away some years before, just as clearly as I’m looking at you.
“And he wasn’t smiling. He was just looking at me. And I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to get close to my dad.’ And all of a sudden, something pulled me back to Earth. I was up there someplace. I didn’t see a light or anything like that. But I remember being pulled back. The pain came back and a lot of thoughts were going through my mind at the same time. But I remember one thought (was), I didn’t want to come back. And that’s strange because my wife, my kids …”
Leon remembers being up on the ground, looking up through a helmet with a visor sheared off. In his memory, two women came from a nearby house to tend to him.
“And I remember somebody, I thought it was one of the ladies, somebody came out from her house to try to help me because I was bleeding from the face and mouth, and they turned my face over,” he said.
Doctors later told him that he could have drowned in his own blood without that intervention.
Former Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Murillo looks at a 2009 photo of Carlos Leon in a hospital bed after a near-fatal motorcycle accient. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Leon regained consciousness after surgery at El Paso’s University Medical Center. After two years of rehabilitation, he regained much of his motor function. In 2012, he was elected to the first of three terms on El Paso County Commissioners Court. He is not seeking re-election this year.
The driver of the truck fled the accident scene but was arrested several days later. But he never showed up for sentencingl and is presumed to have fled to Mexico.
Leon was initially reluctant to return to the scene of the accident, but he and his wife eventually did.
“I just didn’t know what feelings it would bring up. But after a while, when we went the first time, we got off and we prayed there. I feel good. I mean, it changed my life,” he said.
Carlos Leon was wearing this helmet when his motorcycle collided with a truck in 2009. (Photo courtesy Carlos Leon)
Leon tried to find the women he believed helped save his life by turning his face.
“I went back some years later to see this house there, to see if those people live there, to thank them because I was so grateful. No, it’s a rental house, and apparently whoever rented before was already long gone,” he said.
He also knew a sheriff’s deputy had responded to the accident, and he thought about reaching out to him. But records of the investigation were in the offices of attorney Enrique Moreno, who died in 2019, and Leon didn’t want to bother law enforcement officials to look up the name.
But this summer, retired El Paso police Sgt. Al Velarde decided to buy a classic car. And that would lead him to the New Mexico law enforcement officer who helped saved Leon, Velarde’s friend and former boss.
Fate in the form of a Corvette
Velarde became an El Paso nonprofit executive after retiring from a 21-year career in the El Paso Police Department in 2002. He served as the department’s chief spokesperson when Leon was chief. He considers Leon a friend and mentor.
A few years ago, Velarde picked up a new hobby of working on cars. He started with a 2012 BMW.
“I’ve always, in my mind for years and years, said, ‘One day, I’d love to have a nice, collectible, old car that I could bring back to life,’” said Velarde, now executive director of the Paso del Norte Children’s Development Center and a former school board member of the El Paso Independent School District.
So, this summer, he started looking at classic Corvettes in the Facebook Marketplace and came across a blue 1980 model in Las Cruces. He connected with the owner – Jimmy Murillo – and drove to Las Cruces to take a look.
When he looked at the Corvette in the garage, Velarde also noticed that Murillo had several Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He told Murillo that he was a retired police officer and used to ride Harleys. Murillo said he was retired from the New Mexico State Police.
“Then I just threw out that, because we’re talking bikes, that I stopped riding bikes right after Carlos’ accident, former Chief Carlos Leon,” Velarde said.
“The realization came to me that I had been riding motorcycles forever. Why do I keep continuing that risk? And Carlos Leon, a good friend of mine, he’s the chief of police in El Paso, and he almost died. Then that’s when Jimmy goes, oh, he investigated that accident,” Velarde said.
They talked about what they remembered about the accident. Leon’s daughter, Laurie, worked at the time for Velarde at the El Paso Child Crisis Center. Bonnie Leon called Velarde to tell him about the accident, and he took Laurie to the hospital.
“He just told me a little bit about what he saw, cleared it up a little bit. We already knew, right, but he cleared it up a little bit, first-hand knowledge because even after talking to Carlos, Carlos doesn’t remember a lot,” Velarde said.
Former Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Murillo, right, appears in a photo taken around 2009. He shared the picture with Carlos and Bonnie Leon. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
He told Murillo that he thought Leon would like to talk with him and promised to pass along his phone number. He and Leon bumped into each other a week later at an Amigo Airsho event.
“I told him I ran into a guy that investigated the accident and Carlos lit up and said, ‘Oh man, you think he’d mind if I called him?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, he’d love to hear from you,’” Velarde said.
Velarde wound up buying another Corvette in Alamogordo. That one had a manual four-speed transmission, and Murillo’s car was an automatic. Murillo still has his Corvette.
“Even though we didn’t come to an agreement, I thought we made a friendship,” Velarde said.
A reunion, and learning more about a life-altering event
Leon connected by phone with Murillo and agreed to meet with their wives Sunday, July 21, at La Posta restaurant in Mesilla. Carlos and Bonnie Leon decided to take the longer scenic route, via Highway 28, rather than the faster route on Interstate 10.
The drive took them by the accident site.
For the first time, they were able to meet the Murillos. And 15 years later, they learned new details about the accident that nearly took Carlos’ life.
From left, Jimmy Murillo, Carlos Leon, Bonnie Leon, and Marina Murillo talk over lunch in Mesilla on July 21, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
They learned that witnesses did try to help Leon. But it wasn’t bystanders who performed the first aid.
It was Jimmy Murillo, then a Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office deputy on motorcycle patrol that day.
It took him about eight minutes after being notified of the accident to reach the scene at the intersection of Highway 28 and Snow Road. He saw Leon in the street and a couple of bicyclists tending to the injured man.
“I noticed that they were trying to help him, and I told them, ‘OK, thanks, let me see what’s going on,’” Murillo said. He doesn’t remember women coming over from a nearby house, but he said his attention was focused on Leon.
He told the bicyclists to get away from the road so they wouldn’t be struck by oncoming vehicles. In assessing Leon, he noticed blood gurgling from his mouth.
“I turned his head just slightly, because I didn’t know his injuries. I knew it was pretty significant, so I didn’t want to contribute to more of his injuries. So I turned his head to the side and cleared out his mouth,” Murillo said.
Former Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Deputy Jimmy Murillo describes how Carlos Leon flew off his motorcycle and landed on his back after he struck a vehicle that ran a stop sign along Highway 28 in 2009. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Murillo said he may have done cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Leon after clearing the airway, but he can’t remember. He does remember that Leon resumed breathing.
The deputy then made another key decision as an ambulance prepared to take Leon to a Las Cruces hospital. Suspecting that Leon had serious internal injuries, he called a helicopter to take him to UMC El Paso, which had the only top-level trauma center in the region.
“I thought he had bad internal injuries, that’s my first concern, and maybe possible head injuries and spinal injuries, neck injuries,” Murillo said.
The ambulance drove Leon a couple of blocks to an area where the helicopter could land. Murillo cleared emergency radio channels of other traffic so Leon’s emergency would take priority.
Leon wasn’t aware of any of Murillo’s decisions until they were able to talk at La Posta.
“To me, he did all the right things. And that helicopter, I just remember being loaded on there and just the immense pain that I was in. I mean, I was in bad shape,” he said.
Jimmy Murillo, a former Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Deputy and New Mexico State Police officer who has responded to numerous traffic accidents throughout his career, often wonders about the status of victims he has helped. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Murillo said he sometimes wondered what happened to Leon. He didn’t know that Leon was elected county commissioner in neighboring El Paso County three years after the accident.
“I always wondered how he was doing, how he fared after the accident, how his family and everybody adapted. It was just a closure on my part that he was OK,” he said.
Murillo said he retired from the New Mexico State Police a couple of years ago. He now runs a food truck in Las Cruces called The Boyz Straight Up BBQ.
“I did what I needed to do to help save his life. It was just not me, but a combination of everybody that was on scene,” he said.
A new chance at life
Leon had an earlier brush with mortality when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2007. He said the motorcycle accident and recovery changed him.
“The accident just changed me from being a type-A kind of personality to being in the moment always,” Leon said.
“I think that, at that moment, changed me, showed me how vulnerable a person is. So many people had to help me, all the way from people that would clean the room to doctors and everything in between,” he said.
Carlos Leon, an El Paso County commissioner and former El Paso police chief, recalls his near-death experience ina 2009 motorcycle accident near Mesilla, New Mexico. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Almost three years after the accident, on May 29, 2012, Leon defeated two other candidates for the Democratic nomination for the Eastside county commissioner seat. That November, he handily defeated a Republican opponent and took office in January 2013.
Four months into the job, he cast a decisive vote to approve bond sales that allowed University Medical Center, which is overseen by Commissioners Court, to build new community clinics throughout El Paso and build out the main hospital.
Leon had planned to vote no because he thought the decision should be given to voters, but changed his mind the day of the vote. In his interview with El Paso Matters this week, Leon said his personal experience shaped his views on the need for expanding access to health care in El Paso.
“Had UMC not existed, you’d be talking to somebody else today,” he said.
Leon said he’s twice used the emergency room at the UMC clinic built on the Eastside with the bond issue. “I didn’t know I’d be voting for my own health for other issues that sprung into my life,” he said with a chuckle.
Carlos Leon listens to a speaker at a Commissioners Court meeting on Dec. 15, 2022. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
He has not been back on a motorcycle since the accident.
“That was my last ride. That was it. It was so heartbreaking when I sold the bikes,” Leon said.
He’s now a bicycle rider. But he talks wistfully about his motorcycle days.
“I remember coming down the hill from Ruidoso listening to a Cowboy game. And I said, God, it doesn’t get any better than this. Thank you.”
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