Police questioning a man they believed to be drinking alcohol outside Two Rivers Community School the evening of March 17 wound up in a scuffle that landed one officer on sick leave for his injuries.

Officers got a call from a resident about a suspicious man wandering around disoriented in their yard, according to an affidavit.

When police approached the man, a 46-year-old from Glenwood Springs, he dumped out a drink he was holding, according to police.

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He became defensive, saying the police had no reason to question him, and he refused to give them any ID. He was there to pick up his son from the school, he told police.

The affidavit states that the man was larger than the officers, and he had a knife clipped into his pocket. Officers told him to keep his hands out of his pockets, but he kept doing it anyway, according to police.

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An officer said he was going to take his knife away from him “for the duration of the encounter.” And when the officer moved to confiscate the knife the man batted his arm away.

“At this point, due to numerous officer safety concerns listed above and (the man) striking (the officer), I grabbed (his) left arm,” a Glenwood Springs police officer wrote in the affidavit.

The man tried to pull away from police, as one of them yelled at him to “stop resisting,” according to the affidavit.

One officer took him to the ground, where he was face down and continued to fight against the police.

The officer wrote that he continued being combative as they tried to place him in the back of the patrol car. It took four officers to eventually force him into the back seat, but he kicked at them in the process, injuring a couple of officers, according to an affidavit.

The man kicked one officer in the knee, and Valley View Hospital later deemed the officer unfit to return to work “for some time,” according to the affidavit.

He was arrested on two counts of second degree assault on a police officer, a class 4 felony; the misdemeanors resisting arrest and obstructing a peace officer; and public consumption of alcohol, a petty offense.

Woman bloodied in domestic violence, police say

A 20-year-old Rifle man wound up behind bars after police say he broke his girlfriend’s nose and bloodied her face. The victim’s left eye was swollen so badly she couldn’t open it, according to an affidavit.

In the early morning of March 21, Parachute police got a domestic violence call from the woman’s roommate.

The roommate had heard the two arguing in the next room and heard furniture being slammed around. Investigating the scene, police also found the man had broken two tables, according to an affidavit.

The 9th Judicial District Attorney’s office has filed charges of second-degree assault, a class 4 felony, and criminal impersonation, a class 6 felony.

Felony charge for rifle man trying to collect debt

A 53-year-old Rifle man ended up facing felony charges himself after calling in an assault.

From a bed at Grand River Health, with a 4-inch gash in his temple, he told Garfield County deputies that he’d been stuck with something as he was trying to confront a man who owed him money.

At the hospital, deputies could smell alcohol on him, according to an affidavit.

He’d gone to a workshop in the 1500 block of County Road 293 to confront the man. At the workshop he found a couple of men smoking meth, he told police. One of them was the man he was looking for.

He went into the residence and demanded his money back, but then he was hit by something and his memory was blank after that, he told police. “(The Rifle man) said that the next thing he knew he woke up in his house in Rifle bleeding.”

He also had a gun and a knife, which he suspected the two men had stolen, he told police.

But the two men at the workshop said the 53-year-old had kicked in their door and attacked them.

They said the Rifle man had reached for his gun, and one of them “poked” the Rifle man in the face with an ax, according to the affidavit.

While the man was lying on the ground, the men took his gun and knife away, another witness said.

The Rifle man was arrested on charges of aggravated menacing with a gun, a class 5 felony, and first-degree burglary, a class 3 felony.

New hearing date for Ogden

Matthew Ogden, a Parachute man facing a first-degree murder charge in the homicide of his month-old daughter, is scheduled to enter a plea on May 9.

Prior to the scheduling of the plea hearing, Ogden’s defense team attempted to have the 9th Judicial District Attorney’s Office thrown off the case, citing a conflict of interest after Ogden’s old attorney was rehired by the DA’s office. Judge John Neiley rejected the motion for a special prosecutor.