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Crime Briefs: Man picks a fight, ends up at hospital

Ryan Summerlin
rsummerlin@postindependent.com

Glenwood Springs police the afternoon of March 30 responded to an assault at a shop behind the Glenwood Car Wash.

A 59-year-old man had reportedly attacked a 67-year-old man, but it was the accused assailant who wound up going to the hospital.

The younger man was angry that the business owner wouldn’t let him work there anymore. He swung at the man, hitting him in the shoulder. But the shop owner grabbed a wrench, and the two began to struggle, police reported. The older man hit him with the wrench about five times, the younger man still trying to punch him.



The 67-year-old grabbed him by the jaw, his “knuckles…hooked downwards in (the man’s) mouth,” and twice slammed his head into a door, according to an affidavit.

In their struggle they’d knocked over many items in the shop, including a motorcycle and a saw. Police found blood on the shop’s walls and floor.



The 67-year-old man had injuries to his forehead and on his knuckles on one hand by the time police arrived.

After a trip to Valley View Hospital, the younger man was arrested on charges of felony criminal mischief, and misdemeanors of third-degree assault, second-degree criminal tampering and resisting arrest.

drugs, child abuse case

Garfield County sheriff’s personnel March 31 arrested a 42-year-old woman in Rifle after finding methamphetamine in her car and a meth pipe within reach of her 8-year-old child.

Sheriff’s personnel on patrol in Rifle spotted a vehicle with a license plate missing its annual registration sticker. Authorities contacted the driver, then began to inventory the vehicle and found a glass pipe in one of the vehicle’s rear compartments. They later found a second glass pipe, which was in reach of an 8-year-old boy in the car.

“If (the child) were to find and manipulate the pipe, he could be exposed to and (possibly) ingest the residual amount of methamphetamine located within the bulb and stem of the pipe,” according to a deputy.

The deputy also found a small yellow plastic bags “with what appeared to be scrapings of methamphetamine.”

The inside of the vehicle smelled of alcohol and law enforcement discovered two small empty containers between the seats, which the woman said had spilled.

She was arrested, her most serious arresting charges being possession of methamphetamine, a drug felony; and negligent child abuse, a misdemeanor.

SPITTING MAD

Sheriff’s personnel were called April 1 to a disturbance at an RV park in Rifle. A woman reported that her son was intoxicated and threatening to become violent in an argument with a neighbor.

Authorities found he was barred from consuming alcohol by a restraining order. The mother told authorities that her son had been drinking all night, according to an affidavit.

The mother stated that her son had assaulted police in the past, and that he has hepatitis C.

Sheriff’s personnel could hear him shouting profanities inside his residence. He came to the door, “extremely unsteady on his feet and using the doorway for balance,” a deputy wrote in his report.

He admitted to having drank a beer, a violation of his retraining order, according to an arrest affidavit. He came outside and said, “Just (expletive) arrest me,” placing his hands behind his back. But when an officer tried to handcuff him, he spun around and yelled at the officer.

Deputies struggled to get him under control and transport him to the jail.

While a deputy was trying to put him in the patrol car he began trying to force his way out and started make a “hocking” noise like he would spit on the deputy.

He kicked a deputy twice in the forearm, and multiple times in the chest and stomach, according to an affidavit. From inside the patrol car, he repeatedly kicked at the inside of the door.

He also attempted to spit on other officers, taunting them, the deputies believed, over his hepatitis C.

He was arrested on charges of second-degree assault, attempted second-degree assault, both felonies, and misdemeanor violation of a restraining order.

UNFAMILIAR UNDERWEAR

Glenwood Springs police were called to a domestic violence incident on the 1500 block of Mountain Drive on March 29.

A husband and wife began to argue after the wife found some lace women’s underwear in the husband’s laundry, according to a police report. They began to argue and her husband was drinking.

She said he pushed her down twice and called her names, according to an affidavit. He took her phone away, saying he would smash it, when she said she would call the police.

She was then going to call police using her laptop, but the husband “got on top of her while she was on a chair and pulled the laptop away from her … When he did this the chair fell back and she hit her head on a coffee table.”

She said she had hip surgery just a few weeks prior and believed she may have injured it when her husband pushed her down, she told police. She later found the laptop had been bent and the case on her phone broken.

When police arrived, the husband had just left in an Audi TT.

Police stopped the husband on the 3900 block of Midland Avenue, where an officer smelled an “overwhelming odor of an unknown alcoholic beverage coming from the vehicle.”

The man was unable to stand while getting instructions for a roadside sobriety test.

He was arrested on charges of felony criminal mischief, and misdemeanors of harassment, obstruction of telephone services, DUI and failure to provide proof of insurance. Domestic violence was applied as a sentence enhancer.

ICU patient ‘started freaking out”

Valley View Hospital staff called in Glenwood Springs police April 2 after a patient in the ICU was reportedly throwing things and threatening staff.

Police arrived to find the hospital’s security officer blocking a patient into a critical care unit. The security officer said the young man woke up and started freaking out, according to a police report.

An officer reported that the young man said something to the effect of “I am the lord of the world, get out of my way.”

The young man had run into the door, bending the door trim and frame and causing it to come off its tracks.

When police arrived, the young man was ripping medical equipment off the wall in his unit. The police and security officers closed him into the unit and waited for backup.

At Taser-point, the officer ordered him to the ground. Eventually the young man complied. The hospital’s maintenance estimated at least $10,000 in damage to the door.

He was arrested on felony criminal mischief.

‘Tripping’ 26-year-old tries fighting

Deputies on March 27 responded to a fight in western Garfield County on eastbound Interstate 70. Several calls came into dispatch about the altercation, and the deputy who arrived found a man who was possibly under the influence of multiple drugs.

“Dispatch advised that there was a car pulled over, and somebody was being beat up,” a deputy wrote in his report.

The deputy pulled up to three people, two men and a woman, near a 2016 Hyundai Santa Fe SUV pulled over onto the shoulder.

A 26-year-old man wearing boxer underwear and a torn T-shirt was acting aggressively and punched the rear window of the SUV, shattering it with one blow – which didn’t appear to affect the 26-year-old, the deputy wrote.

Though the deputy had drawn his firearm and commanded the man to lie on the ground, the 26-year-old ignored him and charged the deputy and the other man he had been fighting.

The deputy had just enough time to draw his Taser and deploy it into the man’s back. The man immediately fell to the ground, hitting his face. He “began rolling around and screaming for me to shoot him. (He) began making statements about wanting his daughter, and that ‘El Chapo’ as going to get him. (He) was irate, incoherent and his speech was very fast.”

The deputy hit him with the Taser three different times as the man continually recovered and would start acting aggressively again.

The second man said that the 26-year-old was tripping on acid, then he later said the man had done cocaine.
He was arrested on charges of felony attempted second-degree assault on a peace officer and misdemeanor criminal mischief.


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