Kendall Benally

Introduction

Kendall Benally, a 43-year-old enrolled member of the Navajo Nation from Morgan Lake, New Mexico, has been sentenced to federal custody for driving his van into a Navajo Nation police officer and a civilian bystander while drunk, pinning both between his vehicle and a police cruiser before fleeing the scene. Benally was sentenced to 17 days in custody followed by two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to assault with intent to commit a felony, according to a November 4, 2026, announcement by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison and FBI Albuquerque Field Office Special Agent in Charge Justin A. Garris. The September 2025 encounter left the officer with injuries to his elbow, knee, and hip serious enough to require hospital treatment, and the civilian reporting pain and injuries to multiple parts of his body.

Background Information

The encounter began as a drunk-driving report. On September 28, 2025, officers from the Navajo Nation Police Department responded to a call describing a suspected drunk driver traveling at a high rate of speed and throwing containers from his vehicle — the kind of rolling hazard call that ends in a traffic stop, or in the worst case, a crash. When officers located the vehicle near Morgan Lake, they found Benally sitting behind the wheel of a van. He was, by his own later admission to investigators, substantially intoxicated: a breath alcohol test administered after his arrest registered a blood alcohol concentration of 0.11, above the legal limit, and Benally admitted he had consumed six beers and a double shot of liquor before driving. Court records also showed he had twice previously been convicted of driving while intoxicated, making the September 2025 stop a third encounter between his drinking and the law.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Benally pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit a felony for accelerating his van into a police officer and a civilian, pinning them between vehicles, and was sentenced to custody plus supervised release.

What began as a DUI stop became an assault when Benally refused to get out of the van. According to court documents, he ignored repeated commands from the responding officers to exit the vehicle, and when officers deployed pepper spray to break the standoff, Benally responded by accelerating — striking an officer and a civilian and pinning both of them between his van and a police cruiser before fleeing the scene. The officer suffered elbow, knee, and hip injuries that required hospital treatment; the civilian reported pain and injuries across multiple parts of his body. Benally was located and arrested later that morning, the same day he had tried to drive away from officers while drunk, and the assault charge that followed — assault with intent to commit a felony — captured what the acceleration did to two people standing in its path. He pleaded guilty to that charge, and the November 2026 announcement confirmed the sentence: 17 days in custody, then two years of supervised release.

The sentence is a strikingly short custody term for an attack that put a police officer in the hospital, and the court file makes the posture plain: this was a guilty-plea resolution to a single assault count, not a trial record with additional counts. The supervised-release term — two years of federal monitoring after custody, with conditions the court sets — carries the consequence that any violation can return Benally to prison. The 17 days and the 24 months of supervision are the entirety of the imposed sentence announced in the release.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was investigated by the Farmington Resident Agency of the FBI’s Albuquerque Field Office with assistance from the Navajo Nation Police Department and the Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations — the tribal-law-enforcement partnership that handles major crimes across the Navajo Nation, where federal prosecutors carry the cases. The announcement came without a published statement from Benally or his counsel about the assault, and the release records the facts of the encounter without softening them: a drunk driver with two prior DWI convictions, pepper-sprayed, who chose to put the van in gear. For the injured officer, the outcome is a hospital-treated set of joint injuries and a conviction on the felony assault count; for the civilian caught beside him, a federal conviction documenting that the pain and injuries he reported that morning came from a deliberate act of acceleration.

Current Status

Benally is sentenced: 17 days in custody followed by two years of supervised release, with the conviction for assault with intent to commit a felony on his federal record. The sentence was announced November 4, 2026, by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison and FBI Special Agent in Charge Justin A. Garris. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack E. Burkhead prosecuted the case. The supervised-release period is the live part of the sentence — any violation of its conditions over the next two years can send Benally back before the court for additional consequences.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A federal felony conviction for assaulting a police officer changes the shape of Benally’s record permanently: the third DWI-related encounter on his history is now a violent-felony conviction with victims, not a traffic matter, and two years of supervised release keep his conduct under federal observation into 2028. The brevity of the custody term does not soften what the conviction documents — that when officers tried to take a drunk driver off the road, he drove his van into two of them. For the Navajo Nation Police Department, the case is a recorded instance of the hazard its officers absorb on drunk-driving calls; for Benally, it is a felony record, a court-ordered supervision regime, and the end of the presumption that a traffic stop is all a DWI history costs.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of New Mexico, “Morgan Lake Man Sentenced for Assaulting a Police Officer,” November 4, 2026. source