An allegedly manic man injured several Glenwood Springs Police officers while they arrested him on domestic violence charges.
Police were called to a Glenwood Springs hotel around 8:45 a.m. Jan. 17 and arrived to find a 36-year-old man who “appeared very manic, aggravated and spun up,” according to a probable cause document.
The man at the time told officers he “pleads the fifth,” in a reference to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, but admitted that he and his fiancé, 29, had been arguing in their hotel room. He became agitated when officers asked for identification, and returned to yelling that he pleaded the “Fifth.”
The fiancé told police the man had not had his medication and was having a manic episode, and hit her about a dozen times in the back and shoulder. She said at one point her fiancé pinned her on the bed with his knee in her back.
The man’s behavior became more violent when officers handcuffed him, and he planted his heels in the floor, and fell to the ground to avoid officers taking him out of the room.
One officer “delivered a knee strike to his buttocks,” and they got him to the hallway.
The man barricaded his feet to avoid getting placed in the car, and kicked at the officers, who “provided strikes to his body” and forced him into the back seat.
Three officers suffered injuries, according to the affidavit.
The man faces multiple misdemeanor charges, including third-degree assault, and three counts of second-degree assault on assault on a police officer, a felony.
Midland car chase
A Glenwood Springs police officer spotted a white Cadillac sedan driving north on Midland Ave after 10 p.m. Jan 17.
The car didn’t have a license plate on the rear, and the officer attempted to make a traffic stop. But the car accelerated, going 42 mph in a 25 mph zone, and crossed a double yellow line to pass several cars.
Driving north in the southbound lanes, which had snow and ice after a day of storms, the car nearly hit a vehicle head-on, the officer wrote in the affidavit.
The driver slid on the icy road and nearly lost control, and nearly hit another car near the West Meadows traffic light.
The car did not pull over until around Devereaux Road, where the officer told the driver to exit the vehicle and get on the ground.
The driver, William Del Mazo, 24, was arrested without incident. Police found no registration or insurance, but did locate a pipe and pieces of foil with scorch marks consistent with drug use, and a 5-inch stiletto knife and a digital scale.
Once at the jail, the suspect “agreed he was trying to elude” the officer, according to the affidavit.
Registered sex offender gets new charges for domestic violence
Dispatchers could hear yelling in the background when a woman called asking for a civil standby to get someone else’s belongings out of a Rifle townhouse Jan. 19.
When an officer arrived, he saw two men through the screen door. One man, 32, began talking very fast and told police that he was trying to get his wife out of the house, according to the probable cause statement.
The man appeared jittery. He presented his knuckles to the officer and asked if they looked like he had punched anything. The officer saw no scuffs to the knuckles.
The man said his wife was going to tell police he had hit her, because they had wrestled over her phone the night before.
The man’s information indicated that he was on parole and a registered sex offender.
The man said he suspected his wife of texting another man, and had taken her phone while she was asleep, and read texts where his wife said she was trying to leave him.
He woke her up, and confronted her, and they struggled over the phone. He said his wife had one bruise under her eye from a piece of wood he accidentally hurt her with earlier.
The wife told another officer that when her husband woke up and yelled about the test messages, he began to hit her multiple times. She showed the officer bruises on her shoulder and arms. She also said her husband attempted to strangle her, but since she is bigger than him it only lasted a few seconds.
She told officers that she and her husband smoke weed every day, but her husband was not high at the time of the alleged beating.
The man was arrested, and faces charges of second-degree assault, a felony, and misdemeanor assault.
Editor’s note: The Post Independent identifies arrested on suspicion of serious crimes and when a suspect posed a significant risk to public safety.
