Sheriff's Blotter

A boulder the size of a small car came off a ridge above Highway 145 near Dolores during the Oct. 21 rain, crushing a parked truck, striking a camper and stopping about 7 inches from the corner of a shop, according to a Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office report. At a neighboring property, a very large boulder ended up inside another shop whose back wall was gone. No one was hurt.

The following items are drawn from 19 incident reports released by the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 5. Most cover Oct. 20 through Nov. 3; two deal with earlier incidents, on Sept. 16 and Oct. 6. An arrest, summons or citation is an accusation, not a conviction, and everyone named is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. The Cortez Current will update a blotter item when it learns that charges were dismissed or a case was resolved; anyone named can send documentation to CortezCurrent@pm.me.

Wednesday, Sept. 16

9:45 a.m., 45400 block of Highway 160, near Mancos. Deputies, Colorado State Patrol troopers, the Mancos Marshal’s Office, the Mancos Fire Protection District and Southwest EMS responded to a single-vehicle rollover in which someone was hurt and trapped. The highway was closed in both directions. A woman who was a passenger was freed from the vehicle and flown by helicopter to a hospital. The report, written Oct. 29, does not name anyone involved or say what caused the rollover.

Tuesday, Oct. 6

3:24 p.m., 22800 block of Highway 491, Yellow Jacket. A couple from West Valley, Utah, driving to El Paso, Texas, with items for family in Mexico hit a deer at about 1 a.m. and left their damaged car on the shoulder to wait for a tow, according to the report. When their daughters came to unload it later that day, a rear passenger window had been broken and items were missing, including a desktop computer, an iPhone, paint, a cooler, shoes and clothing. The deputy took the report at Community Auto in Cortez, where the car was towed, and asked the family for a list of the missing items and their value; it had not arrived when the report was written Oct. 9.

Tuesday, Oct. 20

2:49 p.m., 18900 block of Road 23.5, near Dolores. A man trying to get his belongings from a home was shoved out of the doorway by his soon-to-be ex-wife, Kelly Goddard, and nearly fell, according to the report. A man who was with him then opened the door and stepped inside; Goddard threw parts of a taken-apart gun at him, hitting his right arm, and shoved him out the door, the report says. The deputy wrote that the second man’s video of the incident matched his account. Goddard was arrested and taken to the Montezuma County Detention Center on two counts of harassment, one of them with a domestic violence designation. The man she was accused of shoving turned out to have an active Cortez municipal warrant, which lists an open-container violation; after a medical clearance at the hospital, he was booked into the detention center on it.

Wednesday, Oct. 21

1:16 p.m., 18400 block of Highway 145, near Dolores. A neighbor called 911 to report that rocks had come off the hillside and crushed a camper, and that she did not know whether anyone was inside. The couple who live there told a deputy they heard a loud, thunderlike sound and felt the house and ground shake when the boulder landed. It crushed a 1976 Ford truck parked by their shop, struck the end of a camper trailer and came to rest about 7 inches from the shop’s corner; no one was in the camper. At a neighboring property, the owner found his shop door all but blown off its hinges, the entire back wall gone and a very large boulder inside, with several pieces of equipment destroyed or knocked over, according to the report. A smaller boulder hit his pickup, and he could no longer open its passenger door. The deputy noted that it had been extremely rainy. No one was hurt.

Sunday, Oct. 25

1:58 p.m., 13300 block of Road 21. A woman reported that three large dogs had come onto her property and that, after seeing one of them with blood around its face, she found one of her piglets dead with extensive injuries. Two of the dogs stayed and were secured by the deputy; the third ran off. A neighbor identified the owner, who acknowledged all three dogs were his and said the tracking collars on two of them had died, according to the report. He said he would pay for the piglet, which the woman valued at $75, if there was solid evidence his dog killed it, but said he did not believe it had. The deputy told him he would get at least a warning citation for having a dog at large under county ordinance and wrote that he would review the woman’s photos. The woman said she would be open to a civil resolution.

3:04 p.m., 15500 block of Highway 145, near Dolores. A woman told a deputy her Jeep hydroplaned on a road slick from hail and rain, spun several times and hit two mailboxes. She was shaken but not hurt, and the Jeep was still drivable. The Colorado State Patrol took over the investigation.

10:47 p.m., 23429 Road G (Elks Petroleum). A sergeant driving by saw a white coupe parked diagonally in the driveway of the closed business, with a light on inside and a gray mark on the asphalt leading to it, as if something under the car had been dragging. The driver, Travis Crook, said he had recently repaired the car, which had not been driven in 20 years, and was taking it on a short test drive; he acknowledged it was not roadworthy, according to the report. The car had no license plate or insurance, and dispatch said Crook’s license was suspended. He was issued a summons for driving under suspension, driving without insurance and operating an unregistered vehicle. He was told to have the car towed, and a deputy drove him home.

Tuesday, Oct. 27

3:10 p.m., Industrial Road and Blueberry Hill Loop, Cortez. Deputies stopped Terry Griffin, who was riding a bicycle, and arrested him on an active Cortez municipal warrant for trespassing. He was booked into the Montezuma County Detention Center.

5:32 p.m., 25400 block of Road H. A storage business reported that a white sedan had been left in its driveway for several days. A deputy found a man changing the car’s rear wheels, who said the car was his and that he would move it when he finished. Dispatch found an active warrant for the man, Christopher Chavez, in a case charging menacing and violation of a protection order, case 26M366. He was arrested and booked into the detention center, and a girlfriend was to pick up his car and truck.

Wednesday, Oct. 28

2:46 p.m., 11000 block of Road 20. A caller reported a possible drunk driver in a silver hatchback. A deputy on his way there saw a silver car pass him at what appeared to be a high speed on Road N, turned around and followed it onto Road 23, where the driver slowed, waved him past, then stopped and parked. The driver, Sondra Winbourn, dropped her purse out of the car and stepped out with her hands up, asking, “Are you after me?” according to the report. The deputy found three small “shooter” bottles of 99-proof alcohol in the car, one of them partly drunk. Winbourn refused roadside sobriety tests, then admitted drinking and driving, the report says. The breath-test machine at the jail had a calibration error and gave no result. After a medical clearance at the hospital, she was booked into the detention center for driving under the influence and having an open container.

3 p.m., Highway 145 near mile marker 26, near Dolores. Dispatch received a crash notification from a cellphone and could not reach its owner. A deputy found the driver standing beside the road and his car about 50 feet off the roadway, at the bottom of the embankment near the riverbed. The passenger, who said his neck and back hurt badly, was put on a backboard and flown out of the area; the driver was taken to Southwest Memorial Hospital. The Colorado State Patrol took over the investigation.

4:17 p.m., 730 E. Driscoll St. (Montezuma County Detention Center). Rene Lopez turned himself in on an active warrant for failure to appear, in case 26T327. He was booked into the detention center.

5:02 p.m., 23600 block of Road F.5. A woman reported that her uncle’s pit bull attacked her small terrier mix near the gate to her fenced yard, grabbing it and dragging it by the bite; a neighbor told the deputy she saw the attack and that it was unprovoked. The deputy noted bleeding in several places under the small dog’s coat. The pit bull’s owner, Tommy Lee Goddard, said his dog was on a leash or tether by his camper, on his side of a pickup truck, and that the smaller dog was outside its fenced area, according to the report; he also said keeping dogs on leashes and chains “turns them.” Goddard was issued a summons for ownership of a dangerous dog that injured a domestic animal.

Thursday, Oct. 29

4:11 a.m., 24500 block of Highway 184, near Dolores. A woman reported that her adult son had broken a door inside the house and that it fell on her. A deputy stopped the SUV he had left in at Road L and Road 25. The son, Jett Neal, said his bedroom door was already partly broken and fell by accident when he pushed it, and his passenger said the same, according to the report. His mother told a sergeant she had been trying to wake him for work when he yelled at her and pushed the door hard toward the hallway, breaking it so it fell on her; the sergeant noted the door opens into the bedroom and saw a red mark where it hit her. A protection order in a criminal case bars Neal from harassing contact with his mother, the report says. He was arrested and booked into the detention center; the report does not list the charges.

Saturday, Oct. 31

1:40 p.m., 10200 block of Highway 491. A deputy sent to check on smoke found a heavy column of black smoke and flames on a hillside, where several large tires and other items, including a swamp cooler, were burning with no one tending the fire. Dispatch had no record of a controlled burn. Billy Sanchez arrived in a dump truck and said it was his burn and that he had called it in, according to the report. The deputy told him burning tires is illegal in Colorado because of the air-quality hazard and issued him a summons under county ordinance for failing to notify dispatch of a controlled burn. Firefighters put the fire out.

Sunday, Nov. 1

12:54 p.m., 23890 Road G (Dollar General). Store employees reported a man and a woman putting items into their pockets and bags. A deputy found the man loading items into a pickup; he showed a receipt, then pulled five small packs of dog food from his jacket and admitted taking them, according to the report. The deputy found no store merchandise on the woman but did find three straws of a kind used to take narcotics. He took them for destruction and told her she would not be charged because she was honest about them. The store did not want anything done to the woman and asked only that the man be barred from the property, and the deputy served him a trespass notice that does not expire.

Tuesday, Nov. 3

12:01 p.m., 23890 Road G (Dollar General). Employees at the same store reported a woman they believed had hidden merchandise, including makeup, nails and socks, after spending about 10 minutes in the restroom. A deputy found her at a nearby business. She denied taking anything and let him look through her bag, where he found false eyelashes she said she had bought earlier that day at City Market; no other merchandise was found, and the report says nothing stolen was conclusively recovered. Dispatch said the woman, Brittney Richardson, had already been barred from the store, and at the store’s request she was issued a summons for third-degree criminal trespass. Her court date is Dec. 9. Also at the store’s request, the deputy issued a trespass warning to a woman who was with her; employees said that woman had not committed any crime.

9:11 p.m., 12900 block of Highway 491. A deputy responded to a single-vehicle crash with airbags deployed and found a Honda Civic in the southbound ditch. The driver said he knew he was speeding westbound on Road N and ended up in the ditch, according to the report. The deputy wrote that he smelled alcohol on the driver’s breath; the driver denied drinking and said he had smoked marijuana about six hours earlier. A Colorado State Patrol trooper took over the investigation, and the report does not say whether the driver was cited.

10:33 p.m., 29100 block of Road J.6. A property owner called 911 to report a domestic disturbance in a trailer on his property. A woman inside told deputies the man she lives with was drunk and had slapped her several times in the face; deputies saw no visible injuries, according to the report. A sergeant noticed scratches on the man’s neck; a deputy wrote that the two scratches looked like fingernail marks made within about the past half-hour. The man gave conflicting explanations for them, and the woman said they happened days earlier when she was not there. She said the property owner saw the man hit her; he told the deputy he had not seen the two fight, though he had seen a mark on her jaw. The deputy found probable cause that the woman, Valerrean Begaye, had assaulted the man, who did not want to cooperate as a victim and said he did not want her to go to jail. She was arrested and taken to the detention center; the report does not list the charges.

The Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office released these reports to the Cortez Current in response to a public records request.