Garfield County Sheriff’s Office
Two inmates of Garfield County jail racked up new charges after officers discovered what appear to be the makings of alcohol known as “hooch” in their cell.
Ykezio Sullivan, 22, and his cellmate Joe Archuleta, 19, face felony charges for having contraband in jail, and Archuleta faces underage possession of alcohol for the trash bag filled with water, cinnamon candy and pieces of bread in their room.
Sullivan is in Garfield County jail on charges of attempting to kidnap a girl from a Rifle home in the middle of the night on June 13, 2018.
A Garfield County Sheriff’s deputy on Monday found “a bowl with a trash bag in it containing liquid consistent with that of making alcohol within a detention facility, commonly referred to as hooch,” according to court records.
The deputies found that Archuleta had purchased cinnamon candy from the jail commissary on Sunday, and Sullivan had tried to bring food to his cell from dinner the same day.
The sugar in the candy and yeast from the bread can be fermented into an alcoholic beverage, the affidavit notes.
Both men, who have been cellmates for about a month, denied knowing where the bag came from.
Archuleta denied any knowledge of the bag of hooch, according to the affidavit.
Sullivan told the deputy that he knew the bag was there, but said, “due to his current circumstances of being in the jail he was not willing to talk” about it, the deputy wrote in the affidavit.
During a court hearing for the new charges Tuesday, prosecutor Sarah Nordgaard asked the judge to set $1,000 bonds for each case, because both suspect have high bonds in their other cases.
Archuleta has been in jail since Feb. 26 on $9,000 bond. Sullivan, who has been in custody in Garfield County since Aug. 21 of last year, is being held on $110,000 bond.
In addition to the hooch charges, Archuleta is accused of assaulting his girlfriend in February, when she had a restraining order against him. Archuleta allegedly confronted a woman, who had a restraining order against him, for sleeping with other men. The woman told Rifle police that Archuleta pinned her to the bed with his hands around her throat, according to court documents.
In separate cases, he allegedly consumed marijuana with a 12-year-old girl in June 2018, and is charged with causing more than $8,000 of damage to a Silt home by supposedly breaking in and throwing a party for about 25 people in April 2018 while the owner was away.
In a separate case, Sullivan is charged with sexually assaulted his girlfriend’s niece multiple times, and was arrested in March 2018 for that case. He faces charges of harassing a witness in that case through private messages on social media, in violation of a restraining order.
Sullivan was arrested Aug. 7, 2018, in Meridian, Idaho, and transported back to Garfield County.