{"id":102084,"date":"2018-01-04T13:18:09","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T20:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-chase-car-theft-suspects-from-silverton-to-purgatory\/"},"modified":"2018-01-04T13:18:09","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T20:18:09","slug":"police-chase-car-theft-suspects-from-silverton-to-purgatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/police-chase-car-theft-suspects-from-silverton-to-purgatory\/","title":{"rendered":"Police chase car-theft suspects from Silverton to Purgatory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

A man and a woman were in La Plata County Jail on Thursday after leading police on a high-speed chase that started Wednesday night in Silverton and reached speeds of 90 mph on U.S. Highway 550.<\/p>\n

The Silverton Standard & the Miner identified the suspects as Joshua Critchfield, 22, and Sage Cornell, 28, both from Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

The San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s Office initially responded to reports of a broken-down vehicle on Highway 550 south of Silverton, which turned out to be stolen, Sheriff Bruce Conrad said.<\/p>\n

He said officers received a second call about a different stolen vehicle shortly after 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a call from the owner of the vehicle reporting it as missing,\u201d Conrad said. \u201cThe owner left the vehicle running to get warm. This was a theft of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pursuit started when an off-duty officer spotted the second vehicle, a late-model Subaru Forester, in downtown Silverton.<\/p>\n

Conrad said the driver led deputies on a \u201chigh-speed, dangerous pursuit\u201d that extended 21 miles south on U.S. Highway 550.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe suspect was trying to run oncoming cars off the road and was throwing things out of the vehicle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The driver turned off the vehicle\u2019s lights several times and drove headlong into oncoming traffic in an attempt to elude officers, forcing other vehicles off the road, Conrad said.<\/p>\n

Officers deployed spike strips on the road near Needles Country Store, but the driver turned around before reaching them, he said.<\/p>\n

Scanner traffic said other cars may have accidentally hit the spike strips, but Conrad said he could not confirm whether that happened.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office, assisted by the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Colorado State Patrol, chased the driver into Purgatory Resort, where he and a passenger fled on foot into the trees.<\/p>\n

Conrad said officers, with the help of a Purgatory security guard, apprehended the suspects around 10 p.m. on a steep grade after following their tracks in the snow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to catch the suspects after a short foot pursuit,\u201d he said \u201cThey reached a dead-end on the trail.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all, the suspects stole two vehicles. Conrad said they are facing several charges, including aggravated motor-vehicle theft, reckless endangerment and felony eluding.<\/p>\n

He said no one was injured during the pursuit, and the stolen vehicle was \u201cfairly unscathed.\u201d<\/p>\n

mrupani@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reached speeds of 90 mph, surrenders after foot pursuit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[168,712,1562],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-102084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-crime","tag-purgatory","tag-san-juan-county-colorado"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102084","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=102084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102084"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=102084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}