Pelotte: Unknown People in His Home
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Gallup Independent
September 30, 2007
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2007/september/092907ehb_bshpintrdrs.html
GALLUP — Gallup Police were called to Bishop Donald Pelotte's home early Thursday morning, an incident that seems to be a strange echo of another incident in late July that left Pelotte seriously injured.
Pelotte, 62, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Gallup, is currently recovering from injuries suffered in July and is absent from his official duties.
According to a copy of an incident report from the McKinley Metropolitan Dispatch Authority, Pelotte made an emergency call to Metro Dispatch at 5:51 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 27, claiming that unknown subjects were in his home. Three Gallup Police officers were dispatched to Pelotte's west side home, with the first two officers arriving at 6 a.m. and the third officer arriving three minutes later.
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The Metro Dispatch report provides a sketchy — but strange — account of the incident. Pelotte reportedly said there were four individuals in his house, but he offered conflicting information about them. At one point, he said one of the individuals came to visit and the others came inside. He also said they had been there for three hours, and he had tried to tell them to leave. Later Pelotte said they were unknown people, strangers who didn't want to leave.
Twice Pelotte is reported to have said the intruders were "gentle" people.
The report said Pelotte advised authorities he had been "quite" (sic)/quiet and had been going upstairs to a bedroom to hide.
By 6:11 a.m. it appears two of the police officers had searched the inside and exterior of Pelotte's residence and apparently found no intruders. However, the report indicates that nearly 20 minutes later Pelotte was asking the officers to check his residence again. Information reported from 6:35 a.m. to the conclusion of the report at 6:55 a.m. could not be read because an official at Metro Dispatch deleted portions of the report's printed text prior to giving the report to the Independent.
All the officers were cleared from the scene by 6:41 a.m.
According to Capt. John Allen of the Gallup Police Department, no police report was filed about the incident. In a brief telephone interview on Friday evening, Allen said he had yet to speak to the officers who searched Pelotte's home. "I have no idea of what they found," he said.
Pelotte was found seriously injured behind his locked bedroom door on July 23, 2007, by his assistant, Deacon Timoteo Lujan, the chancellor for the Gallup Diocese. Pelotte told Lujan that he had fallen down his staircase, although an emergency room physician at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital, who apparently suspected the bishop may have been battered, asked that a Gallup police officer be called to interview Pelotte at the ER. Pelotte was then airlifted to a trauma center at a Phoenix hospital. He was later treated at a Houston hospital before transferring to outpatient services at an undisclosed hospital near his Lauderdale-By-The-Sea condo.
Chancery officials at the Diocese of Gallup have stated that Pelotte suffered traumatic head injury in the July incident, and they have declined to speculate when or if Pelotte would be returning to his duties with the diocese. However, Pelotte took those same officials by surprise when he returned to Gallup Sept. 21.
They were surprised again by this most recent incident. The Independent contacted Matt Doyle, the interim communications director for the diocese, and provided him with a copy of the Metro Dispatch report on Friday evening.
"Right now," he said, "all that we can say is it's very early and we're looking into it."
Doyle said the appropriate officials in the diocese will be contacted, particularly the priests who serve as Consultors to Pelotte. "They will then decide what step to take next," Doyle said, adding that an internal decision will be made within the diocese.
Chancery officials have been maintaining regular telephone contact with Pelotte, Doyle said, but admitted he did not know for sure if anyone from the chancery would be visiting the bishop later in the evening.
The Independent has filed a public records inspection request concerning the Metro Dispatch report. Glendora Orphey, the administration operations manager for Metro Dispatch, told the newspaper that she had removed information from the report because she believed it violated Pelotte's privacy under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA.
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