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CRIME BRIEFSSilt man accused of pepper spraying wife, tot

Ryan Summerlin
rsummerlin@postindependent.com

Silt police on the afternoon of July 1 went to the 700 block of Main Street after a woman called in “screaming, stating her husband was trying to kill her,” according to a police report.

The woman would later say that, in an argument, her 37-year-old husband had grabbed a screwdriver, threatened to kill her and pepper sprayed her and her 1-year-old child.

Walking up to the second-story apartment, officers could smell “a toxic odor” in the stairwell. “As we went up the staircase, the odor became stronger and almost unbearable,” an officer wrote.



Through the open apartment door, officers could hear a man’s voice and a crying baby. “We entered the apartment and immediately became overwhelmed with the smell. We found it difficult to breathe and our eyes began to water,” the officer wrote.

They found the husband holding the baby and yelling. The officers ordered him out of the apartment. Out of concern for the baby, officers called an ambulance and the fire department. The child was “sweating, coughing, crying and appeared to be in distress,” an officer wrote.



The wife was found with an “orange-colored substance on her face, neck and shirt.”

The woman told police that while she was breastfeeding her child, the two got into an argument. He then grabbed a screwdriver and said he would kill her. She went to the bedroom and grabbed a canister of pepper spray.

She told police that the man grabbed the pepper spray and sprayed her and the child. She tried to get out of the room, but he grabbed the child and shut her into the bedroom, threatening to kill her if she left. She had to force her way out of the apartment to call police.

The husband was also found to be a convicted felon, and Silt police found a 9 mm pistol in the residence that the wife said belonged to her husband.

He was arrested on felony charges of menacing, two counts of false imprisonment and weapons possession by a previous offender. Misdemeanor arresting charges were child abuse and two counts of third-degree assault. Domestic violence was applied as a sentence enhancer.

woman kicks, whips officers

Glenwood Springs police responded to Valley View Hospital, where a 25-year-old woman was reported for “causing a large disturbance and … becoming more and more aggressive” Monday evening.

Security at the hospital reported that the 25-year-old’s friends brought her in for intoxication. However, she became aggressive in the hospital and she was refused service and told to leave. She “then continued to cause a scene and was screaming obscenities and flailing around on the ground,” according to an arrest report.

To avoid trespassing charges, her friends called the 25-year-old’s mother to come retrieve her.

“We all patiently waited for her mother to arrive for approximately 15 minutes; all the while (she) was flopping around in the flower bed and on the driveway while screaming nonsense,” an officer wrote in his report.

However, when the mother arrived, she continued being uncooperative and aggressive. The officer eventually stepped in and told the 25-year-old that she needed to leave or she would be charged with trespassing. She responded by screaming obscenities at the officer and making suicidal statements.

While being arrested, she kneed an officer in the groin and later kicked the officer in the leg. At the jail, while changing clothes, she tried to hit a detentions deputy with her shoes and she whipped the deputy in the ear with her pants, according to police.

The suspect was arrested on three counts of felony second-degree assault on law enforcement, along with misdemeanor resisting arrest and petty offense third-degree trespassing.

Speeding minor found with DRUGS

A Colorado State Patrol trooper the afternoon of July 4 stopped an 18-year-old man in a blue Subaru for speeding on Colorado 13.

The trooper then saw a marijuana container on the passenger side floor of the vehicle.

“He gave me the plastic container and inside was a plastic bag containing a compacted white powdery and hard rock substance that from my training and experience appeared to be methamphetamine,” the trooper wrote in his report. The suspected drugs weighed more than 15 grams.

The trooper also found a small bundle of cash in the car, with a plastic narcotics bindle with a white powdery substance weighing at .38 grams.

With this cash was also a $50 bill rolled up with white residue on it. Also in the vehicle was a glass water pipe, an electric scale with white powdery residue, a marijuana pipe containing a fresh, unburned bowl of marijuana and some concentrated marijuana wax.

The 18-year-old told the trooper that he produces and sells the marijuana wax. The minor denied that the meth was his, saying it must have been left by a homeless person to whom he’d given a ride.

He was arrested on felony possession of equipment with intent to distribute a controlled substance, felony possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and petty offense possession of drug paraphernalia.

Couple arrested in domestic call

A Parachute man and woman were both arrested after a domestic violence call to their residence in Battlement Mesa just past midnight June 25.

A Garfield County sheriff’s deputy responded to the 500 block of Ponderosa Circle for the call. When the deputy arrived, she found the woman screaming in the house, at no one in particular it seemed, the deputy wrote in her arrest report. The boyfriend was hiding outside.

The boyfriend’s mother told law enforcement that the woman was acting erratically because she had recently been put on a new medication. The boyfriend and the mother told the deputy that they believed that she had been drinking all day.

A sheriff’s sergeant smelled alcohol on the woman, according to an arrest report.

In an argument, the 30-year-old boyfriend locked his 37-year-old girlfriend out of the bedroom. He had their 6-month-old child with him.

When she tried to climb through a window, he pushed her out and slammed the window on her arms, she told police. She then broke down the bedroom door after the boyfriend tried to separate himself from her. She added that he had kicked her in the stomach earlier in the day, and a physician at Grand River Health would confirm she had a fractured rib.

The boyfriend was arrested on felony second-degree assault, and domestic violence was applied as a sentence enhancer.

The girlfriend also was arrested after authorities found she had a restraining order, with the boyfriend as the protected party, that barred her from drinking or from assaulting the man. It had been modified just a few days earlier to allow contact.

She was arrested for violating the protection order, along with misdemeanors harassment and criminal mischief. Domestic violence was added as a sentence enhancer.

While being arrested, she said he hits her every day and that she never tells on him.


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