Devin Cody Feltes, 32, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of vehicular homicide during a disposition hearing at the Summit County Justice Center on Thursday morning, more than 20 months after a rollover crash killed a passenger in his car.
In the early morning of April 4, 2017, Colorado State Patrol troopers responded to a call regarding a single vehicle crash with unaccounted for occupants on Royal Buffalo Drive near Lake View Drive in Silverthorne, according to an arrest warrant. Troopers responded to the scene at about 3 a.m., and discovered a car about 60 feet from the roadway with extreme damage.
Officers from the Colorado State Patrol and the Silverthorne Police Department provided emergency medical care to the three passengers of the vehicle, found as far as 20-feet from the car. Feltes, who was driving, and another man were transported to St. Anthony Summit Medical Center in Frisco. The final passenger was pronounced dead on scene.
During an investigation of the crash scene, officers discovered that there was no evidence the vehicle was out of control when it traveled off the roadway, according to court documents. There was moderate to heavy snow, along with poor visibility at the time of the crash, though officers determined that weather was not the main causal factor for the crash. Instead, excessive speed and chemical impairment were investigated as the main factors.
An interview with the uninjured party revealed that Feltes had consumed an unknown amount of alcohol prior to driving. Additionally, a trooper noted the smell of alcohol on Feltes’ breath while at the hospital. Citing probable cause, officials took a blood draw from Feltes while he was unconscious and awaiting transport to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood. Shortly after signing a witness statement saying Feltes had been drinking, the uninjured party verbally recanted his statement and said Feltes had been the designated driver for the night.
Official test results from the blood draw disclosed that Feltes had a blood alcohol content of .174, more than twice the legal limit.
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Information was also recovered from the vehicle’s event data recorder and airbag control module — systems that record data from seconds before a crash that investigators can access. According to the data, the vehicle was traveling at 59 miles per hour in a posted 30 miles per hour zone five seconds prior to the crash. The data also revealed that the two survivors’ seat belts were bucked at the time of the crash. The third individual wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, resulting in his ejection from the vehicle.
Feltes was booked into Summit County Jail in May, and charged with two felony counts of vehicular homicide. Feltes was scheduled to go to trial in January, but chose instead to accept a plea agreement in court on Thursday. Feltes pleaded guilty to one count of vehicular homicide, a class-3 felony, and the other charge was dropped.
The felony carries a potential penalty of four-to-12 years in prison, though as part of the plea agreement Feltes will likely receive a sentence in a community corrections facility — an alternative to prison that allows restricted privileges to the community. If Feltes were for some reason not admitted to a community corrections facility, his prison sentence would be capped at six years.
Feltes will be sentenced by Judge Karen Romeo following a presentence investigation on March 4.