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Crime Briefs: Man arrested in Rifle hotel sex assault

Ryan Summerlin
rsummerlin@postindependent.com

Rifle police on March 24 arrested Alejandro Hernandez-Lugo, 36, on sexual assault after a woman staying at the same hotel reported that he had raped her earlier that day.

The woman was staying at the hotel with her fiancé and another man. She told police that Hernandez-Lugo, whom she knew as Tony Caro, knew the other man she and her fiancé were staying with. He sent her a friend request on Facebook, and after she accepted, he invited her to his room at the hotel, according to an arrest affidavit.

She and her fiancé went to his room. At some point he quietly propositioned her, but she refused, she told police.



Then he gave the fiancé some cash, a key to the room and asked him to run out and pick up some razors. When the fiancé came back, the key didn’t work for the door, and though he knocked on the door several times, he didn’t hear anything in response, he later told police.

The woman reported that Hernandez-Lugo sexually assaulted her for about four hours. The victim told police that he was sniffing methamphetamine and cocaine during the assault. He also offered her drugs, and when she refused, he poured methamphetamine on her nose, trying to get her snort it, she said.



The fiance went back to his room, thinking the two must have been in another room. Later he found her hiding under the covers in their room, and she was covered in bruises.

The other man staying in the hotel room with the couple told police that the woman had been missing for about five hours and came back “sobbing and terrified.”

They told officers that Hernandez-Lugo left in a Lincoln SUV.

Officers later pulled him over in a Lincoln Navigator, and an officer found “a white powder on the edge of the car seat and (Hernandez’s) hands.”

“I’ll come clean. It’s crystal. I keep it in my pocket with no bag,” Hernandez-Lugo said, according to police.

An officer tested a small crystal from the seat, and it was positive for methamphetamine. The officer also found the hotel registration bearing Hernandez-Lugo’s name and vehicle description.

He was arrested on charges of sexual assault and false imprisonment, both felonies.

CHARGES IN VEHICLE ASSAULT

A man arrested in Parachute on attempted murder March 18 has instead been formally charged with lesser crimes.

Marvin Jackson was charged Monday with first-degree assault causing serious bodily injury with a deadly weapon, first-degree assault with extreme indifference and vehicular assault, all felonies.

He was arrested after Parachute police responded to reports that he ran over a man with whom he was fighting with in a parking lot.

Witnesses reported seeing the two men fighting, then seeing Jackson hit the man with his Hyundai Sonata. Officers estimated that the car travelled another 230 feet or more after hitting the man. And they found no evidence that the car swerved or braked where the man was hit.

Wal-Mart theft leads to Meth

Three people were arrested March 25 by Rifle police after fleeing Wal-Mart when a loss prevention employee tried to stop them for theft.

Video surveillance obviously showed two young men huddling around a woman as she concealed items in her purse, an officer wrote in his report. One of the men also appeared to have a bottle of motor oil in his pants.

After pulling over a vehicle with the three suspects, officers found two backpacks containing a small amount of methamphetamine in the vehicle. The woman claimed one of the packs, while the 23-year-old man eventually claimed the other one.

An officer also discovered a .22 pistol and a CO2 pistol in the car. In the 23-year-old man’s pack they also found two loaded .22 pistol magazines.

All three were arrested on charges including possession, a drug felony, and petty offense theft. One of the men was also charged with several misdemeanor counts of protection order violation. And the woman was also charged with felony criminal impersonation.

Man attempts to evade cops in neighbor’s home

A Glenwood Springs police officer on March 25 spotted a man driving who the officer knew to have a suspended license.

The driver, a 24-year-old man, quickly pulled into a parking spot near his residence on the 900 block of Pitkin Avenue and started walking toward the house next door.

“I pulled up at the address and shouted (his) name. He stopped, looked back at me, shook his head and opened the front door of (the house next door),” the officer wrote in his report.

Officers banged on the door and called his name for about 10 minutes before they got his girlfriend to call him on the phone and convince him to come out. Both the 24-year-old and his girlfriend said the house belonged to a friend, but they couldn’t give any more information than a first name. The officer did not believe that the young man knew the owner of the house. Rather, he suspected the man went inside to evade police.

He was arrested on charges of first-degree criminal trespass, a felony, along with obstructing a peace officer, no proof of insurance and driving while suspended, all misdemeanors.

Felon found with gun and meth

Shortly after midnight Saturday, Rifle police were dispatched to a report of suspicious activity at the 4th Street Alpine Bank.

A witness saw two men walking around vehicles and shining lights into them.

Searching the area, an officer spotted in an alley a man who matched the description officers were given for one of the suspicious men. He wore a bandana.

At first the man appeared to ignore the officer’s calls to stop; he walked down the alley but soon came back.

The officer found a loaded 9 mm pistol magazine on the man, but no gun, two knives and a flashlight.

He was also wanted on a felony warrant out of Garfield County. The officer also discovered he was a convicted felon and therefore was barred from possessing weapons.

Down the alley the officer found a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol of the same brand, though missing its magazine, and a black nylon bag containing 9.5 grams of methamphetamine, a glass pipe, about 40 small plastic bags, a syringe, a metal spoon and a glass vial of clear liquid.

He was arrested on charges of possession of a controlled substance, a drug felony, felony possession of a weapon by a previous offender, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a petty offense.


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