{"id":23104,"date":"2025-03-18T16:23:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T22:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/omar-brito-gets-date-for-plea-hearing-after-arrest-in-gunfire-at-cortez-bar\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:26:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:26:38","slug":"omar-brito-gets-date-for-plea-hearing-after-arrest-in-gunfire-at-cortez-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/omar-brito-gets-date-for-plea-hearing-after-arrest-in-gunfire-at-cortez-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Omar Brito gets date for plea hearing after arrest in gunfire at Cortez bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County Combined Courts, including the 22nd Judicial District court. Former finance director Katheryn Moss\u2019s arraignment date was set with the district court for Aug. 27.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Thursday, District Judge William Furse modified the bond of a man facing charges related to last month\u2019s gunfire at Patron Nightclub in Cortez and scheduled a plea hearing for April.<\/p>\n

Omar Brito appeared in 22nd Judicial District Court for a bond hearing and return filing of charges. He was not in custody and was in the process of hiring an attorney.<\/p>\n

Brito is not eligible for a preliminary hearing, so his plea hearing was set for April 3 at 9 a.m. Furse also modified Brito\u2019s bond, allowing him to leave the state to drive his daughter back to college after spring break, per Brito\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

Brito was arrested Feb. 23 at Patron Nightclub on suspicion of felony menacing, prohibited use of a firearm, obstruction, carrying a concealed firearm without a license, and possession of a weapon by a previous offender after police received multiple calls about gunshots.<\/p>\n

Six callers reported the sound around 3 a.m., saying the shots seemed to come from West Montezuma Avenue and West Empire Street, west of North Chestnut Street.<\/p>\n

He was arrested outside Patron Nighclub after being seen with a handgun and walking away from an officer. Though he initially ran, he was arrested outside the building without incident.<\/p>\n

Before locating the gun, police found \u201cnumerous\u201d 9 mm shells north of the nightclub. No one had reportedly seen Brito fire the gun, however. The .22-caliber Glock 44 was later found in a field to the west of the nightclub.<\/p>\n

According to Saudiel Arellanes Blanco, owner of Patron, Brito had been asked to leave for \u201ccausing issues with other customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brito also reportedly pointed the handgun at one of the bouncers, who also identified himself as Brito\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

Brito\u2019s criminal history also revealed two felony burglary convictions and a charge of possession of a weapon by a previous offender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brito to drive daughter to college after spring break<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,133,168,28,60,29,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23104","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=23104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77978,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23104\/revisions\/77978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23104"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}