Court filings and local reporting say the baby may have been alive when he was buried in a remote area near Flora Vista.
FLORA VISTA, N.M. — A New Mexico father accused of killing his 11-month-old son during a walk near the family’s home now faces a paused criminal case as a judge considers his competency after investigators found the baby’s body partly buried in a rural area west of Flora Vista.
The case has drawn sharp attention in San Juan County because prosecutors still accuse John Hannon, 43, of child abuse resulting in death and tampering with evidence in the death of his son, John Teigue “JJ” Hannon, while the court decides whether he can move forward in the ordinary criminal process. The allegations tie together a missing-child report, security camera footage of a stroller in an isolated area, medical findings that investigators say were deeply disturbing, and a record of earlier family contact with police and child welfare officials.
Investigators say the case began late on Feb. 8, when the child’s mother, Krystal Phillips, called for a welfare check after she had not seen JJ for about a day. According to court records, Phillips told deputies she last saw the baby on Feb. 7, when Hannon left with JJ and another young child for a walk to a nearby Dollar General. Hannon later returned without the infant and told Phillips that a grandparent had taken the child to Colorado, officers said. Phillips told investigators she feared something bad had happened and asked Hannon to call his mother to prove where the baby was, but the affidavit says he refused. Around the same time, deputies connected her report to a separate tip from a homeowner whose security cameras had shown a man pushing a stroller through a remote area off New Mexico 516. Deputies found the stroller discarded in a ditch and then went to the RV where Hannon was staying. When he did not come out, officers forced entry and found him hiding under a blanket on a bed.
Search teams worked through the night and returned after daybreak on Feb. 9. Shortly before 10 a.m., deputies found JJ’s body in the same rural area where the stroller had been recovered. Court records say the baby’s head and left arm were buried in dirt while the rest of his body remained exposed. Investigators also reported finding Hannon’s shoe prints at the scene and clothing tied to both Hannon and the child in the search area. During questioning, officers said Hannon gave shifting answers about where JJ was. In an exchange described by investigators and later reported by KOB, Hannon said the baby was “hurt bad.” Later, after more questioning, investigators said he answered “Yeah, yeah” when pressed about leaving the child there because he knew the baby was dead. Other court records cited by local outlets say Hannon also told detectives, “I knew he was dead.” Those statements became a key part of the case because prosecutors say they place Hannon with the child during the final hours after an earlier explanation that deputies considered false.
Medical findings added the detail that most changed the direction of the case. According to court documents described by local reporters, a doctor with the Office of the Medical Investigator found that JJ had a skull fracture, a forehead abrasion and dirt in his airway. Investigators wrote that those findings suggested the child may have still been alive when he was buried. Authorities have publicly said the manner of death was homicide, but they have not laid out a fuller motive in open court. The public record also leaves gaps in the timeline between the walk on Feb. 7 and the search that ended the next morning. The security video cited by the sheriff showed a man pushing a stroller in the area, but the footage alone did not publicly establish whether a child was inside at that moment. That left detectives to build the case from the missing-child report, the physical scene, the interview with Hannon and the medical evidence. Sheriff Shane Ferrari later said there is “no greater evil” than people who hurt and kill children, a statement that underscored how seriously county officials were treating the case.
As the homicide case moved into court, older records also became part of the public picture. Local reports based on court files say Hannon faced several domestic violence related charges in 2024 and was later discharged from probation unsatisfactorily after serving 84 days in jail. Records reviewed by those outlets say Phillips had sought a domestic violence order of protection for herself and her children, alleging that Hannon strangled her, but the petition was dismissed after she did not appear in court. One child in the home also told police in an earlier case that Phillips’ head had been slammed into a baby crib, according to court records cited by local news organizations. Jake Thompson, a spokesman for New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department, confirmed to local reporters that the agency had a prior history of involvement with the family. Public records also show Hannon was arrested on unrelated charges tied to a Jan. 31 crash in Farmington in which he was accused of driving under the influence of drugs and tampering with evidence. Those allegations are separate from JJ’s death, but they help explain why deputies already had other warrants and charges in play when they took him into custody.
The criminal case formally took shape on Feb. 11, when the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said Hannon was served at the county detention center with first-degree felony child abuse resulting in death and second-degree felony tampering with evidence. The San Juan County District Attorney’s Office then sought to keep him jailed before trial because of the severity of the allegations and his criminal history. The case soon took an unusual path. One district judge recused himself on the same day charges were filed, and later reassignments moved the matter to District Judge Bradley Keeler in Gallup. At a Feb. 24 hearing, defense attorney Nicole Hall indicated that she wanted to raise competency concerns. She filed a motion the next day seeking a forensic evaluation and wrote that she had a good-faith belief Hannon might not be competent to stand trial because he did not understand the charges and appeared to have memory problems. On March 3, Keeler stayed the criminal case and transferred it to the competency docket. A New Mexico court schedule later listed Hannon before Keeler in Gallup on March 30. Publicly available reporting reviewed for this article did not describe the outcome of that setting, leaving the next court action unclear as of Wednesday.
For many people in the Flora Vista area, the setting itself remains part of the shock. The search unfolded in open country between Aztec and Farmington, in a stretch of San Juan County marked by dirt roads, scattered homes and drainage ditches instead of busy streets. What first drew official attention was not a call from the scene of a killing, but a resident’s unease after seeing a man with a stroller move through a remote patch of land. That image of an empty stroller in a ditch became one of the case’s central details as deputies worked backward to piece together what had happened. Ferrari said on the day the body was found that there was no threat to the public, but he also called the case deeply unsettling for the community. The county at first withheld the baby’s name out of respect for the family, a sign of how closely the case touched a small community where the home, the road and the search area were all near one another. Ferrari later thanked deputies and detectives for the long hours they worked and said many people would never understand the toll such cases take on responders.
As of Wednesday, the homicide case against Hannon remained pending, but it was still paused while the court handled the competency issue. The charges have not been dismissed. The next clear public milestone is a ruling or hearing that shows whether the case can return to the normal path toward trial.
Author note: Last updated April 1, 2026.