Tools taken from parked truck
A truck parked overnight near the Midland Center in Glenwood Springs was allegedly broken into and burgled.
The owner of the truck called police Dec. 6 after 8 a.m. to report the incident.
Glenwood Springs Police officers arrived and noticed the window behind the passenger side door was missing.
Emergency medical responders told police that they had seen a man with a cowboy hat near the vehicle the night before on an unrelated call.
The owner said he had left his car there the day before and taken his work truck home overnight.
When he arrived the next morning, he saw his belongings in the car strewn over the pavement on the passenger side.
There were also saw wires exposed underneath steering column “as if someone had attempted to pry open the column to ‘hotwire’ the truck,” the police officer wrote in probable cause documents.
The damage was at least $3,000, the officer said, and the owner said the truck was only worth about $5,000.
Around 12:40 p.m., the officer received a call of two suspicious men walking along the railroad tracks off of Devereaux Road.
The officers arrived and confronted the two men, one of whom was the subject of the emergency medical call the night before.
The other, in a cowboy hat, admitted he had been inside the truck, and that he was trying to help out by turning off the running lights.
Asked if he had tried to hotwire the car, the suspect said something like “If he knew what he was doing, the car would be gone,” the officer wrote in the report.
The man also had a tool bag with about $100 worth of screwdrivers and wrenches, which matched what the truck’s owner said belonged to him.
Alleged racial harassment at the Park n’ Ride
The Carbondale RFTA station became the scene of an alleged bias-motivated harassment and menacing incident on Dec. 3.
Around 9:45 p.m. Dec. 3, a man called Carbondale Police and said someone had pulled a gun on him.
The alleged victim, a black man, described the suspect as a Hispanic man.
The officer drove west on the bike path, and saw a man with clothes matching the victim’s description near the intersection with Highway 133.
The officer called out, and the man stopped briefly, then continued on, and ducked behind a white car. After another officer arrived as backup, the suspect emerged with his hands up and was arrested.
The officers said they smelled alcohol on the 37-year-old man, who would not say where the gun was, according to arrest documents.
There was a protection order against him, prohibiting him from purchasing a firearm, according to the affidavit.
The alleged victim told police that he was waiting at the RFTA Park n’ Ride, when the suspect began using racial slurs to say that a black man had slept with his wife, and became angry.
The suspect flashed the gun in his waistband, and when the alleged victim asked if he was going to use it, the man pulled out the gun and cocked it. He left after the alleged victim began to call police.
The officers and a Garfield County Sheriff’s deputy located the gun about 15 feet from where he was arrested.
The man is being charged with felony menacing, along with bias-motivated crime and violation of a protection order, both misdemeanors.
Carbondale roommates not getting along… at all
A Carbondale man called police Dec. 8 and said his roommate had destroyed his room and thrown out many of his belongings.
Police arrived at the house and found a number of belongings, including a vacuum cleaner, in the dumpster.
A neighbor told police that she saw the roommate talking with a mailman about a motorized bike worth about $3,000.
The suspect had told the man that his roommate had moved out and was throwing all his things away, and the mailman apparently took the motorized bike, according to the witness.
Shortly after 5 p.m., police noticed a light on in the house, and the suspect came to the door, where he was arrested on charges of theft, criminal trespass, and criminal mischief, all felonies.
The suspect told police he had not slept the night before and had not taken his medications for a manic disorder.
The man said he was trying to clean out the garage, and may have thrown away his roommates’ belongings.
He asked to be taken to the hospital for treatment. Police booked him in the Garfield County jail.