The public is being asked to help find a Salem, N.M., horse trainer last seen two weeks ago. John Barnett, 65, drove away from his rural Salem home, 11 miles outside of Hatch, the afternoon of Aug. 11, according to Do-a Ana sheriff's investigator Ricky Madrid. A neighbor spotted him last, doing yard work at his girlfriend's residence on Spring Canyon Road in Hatch. Recently, Barnett had reportedly been depressed due to a bank repossession of some of his equipment, according to family and law enforcement. A native of Duncan, Ariz., Barnett was busy building and equipping a horse-training arena, and preparing for work running cattle, when his girlfriend, Sun-News columnist Claudette Ortiz, profiled him in April. Barnett "feels blessed," she wrote. "Like all blessings, his multiplied on a steady diet of midnight oil and elbow grease. In Hagerman, he learned to rope calves with two wraps and a hooey (a half-hitch knot) from his uncle at age 11. While attending college in Las Cruces, he worked and lived at the Cox Ranch 10 miles east of the NMSU campus, studying Range Science by gas light. As a calf roper on the rodeo circuit, then rancher and horse trainer, he is used to starting his day in the middle of the night." Since going missing, his family has tried repeatedly to reach him on his cell phone, but he has not answered and the phone might have run out of minutes, Madrid said. He was last seen driving a white 2003 Ford two-door pickup truck displaying New Mexico registration and plate FXY-660. Anyone with any information on his whereabouts is asked to contact central dispatch at (575) 526-0795. You may remain anonymous...moreThis didn't catch my attention on the TV news tonight, but then I read this story in the Sun-News and the words Hagerman and calf roper jumped out at me. I went to school with Barnett at NMSU, only I knew him as Johnny.
Sure hope they find him alive and well.
No comments:
Post a Comment