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Crime Briefs: Come to the penthouse for some gunplay

Ryan Summerlin
rsummerlin@postindependent.com

Glenwood Springs police were called to the Hotel Colorado early Feb. 5 for someone being threatened with a handgun.

Police arrived and went directly to the “penthouse level,” where they found a small group in the common area.

A man there said he had met a woman in the lobby while having some drinks, and she invited him and his friends up to the Molly Brown suite, according to an affidavit.



But after they’d come into the room, the woman’s 24-year-old boyfriend appeared and pointed a pistol at the man, demanding that they get out.

The woman later told police that her boyfriend had taken off and she didn’t know where he was. At about that time the boyfriend, visibly intoxicated, got off the elevator.



The officers checked him for weapons and lifted his shirt, where they saw the butt of a handgun, a Springfield Armory 45 ACP subcompact 1911, according to the police report.

He was arrested on charges of felony menacing and misdemeanor prohibited use of a weapon.

HEROIN, METH, NAMES AND NUMBERS

Stopping a woman for a broken headlamp, a Rifle officer arrested the 45-year-old driver on DUI and found drugs in her car. Among her possessions was a note pad containing a list of names and numbers.

The officer could smell alcohol on the driver’s breath, and the woman’s speech was slurred. She did not have a driver’s license or valid insurance.

“She was shaking as I spoke with her and said she gets nervous being around cops,” the officer wrote in his report.

After failing a roadside sobriety test, she was arrested and refused to submit to a chemical test.

In her center console the officer observed a set of brass knuckles.

The Rifle officer searched a black leather purse in the vehicle and found a brown tin container with small plastic bags containing “white crystalline substance and dark-colored hard substance … consistent with methamphetamine and heroin.”

Also in the vehicle were more small bags, a glass pipe, a digital scale with crystalline residue and a small note pad with names and numbers.

“The note pad is consistent with the illicit sale of controlled substances,” the officer wrote in his report.

The substances in the purse tested positive for 4.9 grams of methamphetamine and 4.8 grams of heroin.

She was arrested on charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, possession of heroin and possession of methamphetamine, all drug felonies. Her arresting charges also included several misdemeanors: driving under suspension, DUI, possession of illegal weapons and failure to provide proof of insurance.

Seriously, no smoking downtown

Glenwood Springs police issued nine citations for smoking in prohibited areas in Glenwood Springs between Feb. 1 and 3. These tickets start at $200, then move up to $300 and $500 for subsequent offenses.

off-duty cop, family menaced

An off-duty Glenwood Springs officer reported the evening of Feb. 2 that a transient man was screaming at him and his family and brandishing weapons threateningly at the Glenwood Springs McDonald’s.

Leaving the fast food chain with his wife and three children in the vehicle, the officer saw a dog in the parking lot. As when he went to drive around it, the transient man “became enraged and screamed obscenities at him and his family, telling him to slow down,” according to a police report.

The man went in front of the vehicle, pulled out a “hook-style knife from a sheath … and motioned it in an aggressive and menacing manner towards (the officer) and his family.”

Afterward the man continued lurking in the area near their car and later picked up a hatchet and “began striking a nearby tree in an intimidating manner,” while the officer waited for on-duty police to arrive.

Officers arriving on scene commanded him to put his hands up, an order he failed to follow. He finally cooperated, but when an officer tried to handcuff him, he pulled away. Two officers, including the off-duty officer, took him to the ground.

He was arrested on charges of felony menacing, misdemeanor resisting arrest and petty offense disorderly conduct.

TEEN FLEES police on motorcycle

A Carbondale officer on Feb. 5 spotted a young man on a Honda dirt bike driving through town with no license plate.

Running from the patrol car, the motorcyclist nearly lost control and fell a couple of times, weaving around cars and blowing through stop signs on his way to the Main Street roundabout and then east onto Main Street.

“(The motorcyclist) continued on Main Street, disobeying every traffic control device at speeds in excess of 60 mph. (He) used the entirety of Main Street in attempt to elude me. Main Street was busy with citizens walking on the sidewalks.”

He blew through the stop sign at Main Street and Snowmass Drive.

Eastbound on Garfield County Road 100, the officer observed him pulling away at more than 90 mph. Pulling into a driveway, he tried to lose the officer by turning back in the other direction on the county road. But he lost control and fell over with the bike.

The young man refused to cooperate with police and said he would only give his name if he could have a cigarette.

He was arrested on charges of felony vehicular eluding, along with driving under restraint, reckless driving and reckless endangerment, all misdemeanors. His arresting charges also included speeding 40-plus over the speed limit and failure to provide proof of insurance, both traffic misdemeanors.


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