The evening of April 17, Garfield County deputies were dispatched to Battlement Mesa after a 17-year-old girl reported a stranger was in her home.

The girl had been on the phone in her room when she heard someone in the house. She went to check and found the front door standing open.

She spotted the man crouching behind the kitchen table but thought it was her brother. He didn’t move, so she grabbed a hunting knife and came back to see clearly that it wasn’t her brother. She called police and reported that he left on foot.

A pack of insulin syringes and an insulin pen was missing from the teen’s vehicle, according to an affidavit.

En route to the house, a deputy also came across an angry man saying someone broke into his car. While deputies talked with the 17-year-old, dispatch reported another criminal trespass in progress nearby, where a man caught another man breaking into his truck and stealing a loaded .380 handgun.

Authorities later spotted a man jumping a backyard fence. A deputy found him lying on the ground near a tree and ordered him to raise his hands. The suspect complied, but at one point he put his hands behind his back and refused to raise them as commanded. A deputy, fearing that he was armed, used a Taser on him. While taking him into custody, law enforcement also found him with a checkbook from a residence where a vehicle was broken into. The gun was found discarded nearby.

On top of the trespassing at the home, four nearby vehicles were reportedly broken into that night.

The man was arrested on charges of second-degree burglary and five counts of first-degree criminal trespass, all felonies. Additionally his arresting charges included theft, resisting arrest and second-degree criminal trespass, which are misdemeanors.

Rock-hurling teen arrested

Two men at the Carbondale 7-Eleven flagged down an officer April 21 and reported that, while they were driving on Colorado 133, a young man had been chasing them on a bike and throwing large rocks at their truck.

Contacting an 18-year-old matching that description on a bike at 12th Street and Colorado Avenue, an officer yelled at him to stop, but he kept pedaling away, losing police for a time.

While police were searching the area, another officer later spotted the young man at the same intersection. He wasn’t apprehended until a civilian knocked him off his bike, and he was still “combative verbally and physically” and not cooperating with police, according to an affidavit.

“The suspect … was yelling that he hated white people while throwing rocks and broken glass on the ground near him at the bystanders,” according to the report.

He was arrested on charges of felony menacing, along with misdemeanor charges of obstructing a police officer and resisting arrest.

parolee FIGHTS OFFICERS

Rifle police and parole officers got into a brawl with a parolee after checking on him at a Rifle hotel.

At about 8 a.m. April 18, Rifle police were at the Gateway Lodge helping parole officers who were checking on the 29-year-old parolee.

He answered the door of his room. “The parole officers entered into the room … and I walked in behind them,” a Rifle officer wrote in his report. The parolee “said we could talk outside, and the parole officers said we would talk in the room.”

A woman in the room said she needed to get dressed.

The parole and police officers argued with the man, telling him to sit in a chair, though he did not want to.

“I told (him) to sit down and he refused again, so I grabbed his right arm and pulled him down into the chair. I then decided to handcuff him because he was being noncompliant from the very beginning, trying to control the contact, and I was worried he might have access to weapons somewhere in the room,” the Rifle officer wrote.

The officer tried to pull the man’s arm behind his back, but the 29-year-old stiffened up his body. A parole officer grabbed the man’s other arm and all three of them went into a struggle on the ground. The man fought against the officers, one of whom struck him in the thigh and punched him in the face, according to an affidavit. When officers finally got him on his back, he kicked one of them.

While he was fighting with parole officers on the ground, the Rifle police officer struck him with a Taser in the abdomen, then in the leg, each time to no effect, according to his report.

When officers finally gained control, he was arrested on charges of second-degree assault, a felony, along with obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors.