Espanola, New Mexico (AP)

A motorist smelled of alcohol after his pickup truck collided with another pickup, killing Tewa storyteller and linguist Esther Martinez, police say.

Alcohol containers also were found in the truck driven by Jaime Martinez Gonzalez, 44, a Mexican national living in Nambe, said Detective Christian Lopez of the Espanola Police Department.

Police obtained a search warrant Sept. 18 to draw a sample of blood from Gonzalez, who was being treated for facial injuries at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, Lopez said.

Espanola police plan to ask a state district judge to sign an arrest warrant for Gonzalez on a charge of vehicular homicide, Lopez said.

Martinez, 94, of Ohkay Owingeh, was killed the night of Sept. 16 when the truck she was in was hit head-on by the truck driven by Gonzalez in Espanola, police said.

Gonzalez sideswiped a car before the head-on crash, which occurred a few miles from Martinez’s home, police said. Two of Martinez’s daughters were injured, but both are expected to recover.

Several hundred people turned out to pay their respects.

“I’m 99 percent sure she would say, ’Do not grieve. This is a sad day but believe in our ways – that the spirit lives on,” Pueblo Gov. Joe Garcia said Sept. 20 in his eulogy.

Martinez had just returned to New Mexico from a National Endowment for the Arts celebration in Washington, D.C., where she accepted a National Heritage Fellowship.

Matthew Martinez said his grandmother’s death was a senseless act.

“I’m not sure there is an emotion to describe what we are feeling right now,” he said, adding that the family feels sorry for Gonzalez. “My grandmother was a very spiritual person, and she would have prayed for him.”

Martinez and 11 other folk and traditional artists were honored in Washington, D.C., as 2006 National Heritage Fellows, the nation’s highest honor for such artists.

The NEA said in a news release that Martinez received a standing ovation for her stories and life’s work preserving her native Tewa language and traditions.

Martinez taught her native language from 1974 to 1989 at schools in Ohkay Owingeh, formerly known as San Juan Pueblo. She also helped translate the New Testament of the Bible into Tewa and compiled Tewa dictionaries for various pueblos

In 1992, Martinez published one of her favorite stories as a children’s storybook, The Naughty Little Rabbit and Old Man Coyote. She also published My Life in San Juan Pueblo: Stories of Esther Martinez in 2004.

David Cloutier, executive director of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, said Martinez is irreplaceable because of her vast knowledge of the Tewa language.

“Even at an advanced age, it’s a net loss not only for the Native community, but for the world,” he said.