<\/p>\n
A Cortez police chase on Wednesday afternoon led to a brief lockdown at Mesa Elementary School after a man fled on foot into Hawkins Preserve.<\/p>\n
According to police, a traffic stop about 2:15 p.m. led to a chase when a man refused to pull over for an officer. An officer at the scene said the man abandoned a vehicle outside the Handy Mart gas station on South Broadway. The suspect then ran toward Hawkins Preserve, where police pursued him on foot but failed to catch him.<\/p>\n
Police Lt. Andy Brock said the suspect, Robert McClendon, had two felony warrants from Texas. He said police did not believe he was armed.<\/p>\n
Brian Stokley, manager of the Handy Mart, was about to deliver a pizza when he saw the southbound driver pull into the store parking lot and drive around back.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe drove into the northbound lane and into our south driveway, going probably 60 mph with its tires smoking,\u201d he said. \u201cI called 911, and police arrived right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brock said McClendon had a female passenger who was not suspected of a crime. Officers released the suspect\u2019s vehicle to her after searching the Hawkins Preserve area.<\/p>\n
As of Thursday morning, McClendon was at large. Brock said police continued to search for him.<\/p>\n
Mesa Elementary School, on Seventh Street between South Broadway and South Cedar Street, went on lockdown for about 5 minutes, human resources director Dan Porter said. Students had left the building because it was an early release day. The school remained in its normal lockout status with staff inside.<\/p>\n
Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said some patrol deputies responded to the scene, but were told the police had enough officers to handle the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suspect flees on foot near Mesa Elementary School<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101345"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}