{"id":24248,"date":"2024-12-24T01:59:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T08:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kirtland-man-gets-almost-14-years-in-shooting-on-ute-mountain-ute-reservation\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:50:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:50:57","slug":"kirtland-man-gets-almost-14-years-in-shooting-on-ute-mountain-ute-reservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/kirtland-man-gets-almost-14-years-in-shooting-on-ute-mountain-ute-reservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirtland man gets almost 14 years in shooting on Ute Mountain Ute reservation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=ce67455b-6197-5acd-a9ec-dccfa532eca2&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"231\" height=\"241\" alt=\"Lovell Cassius Benallie\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Lovell Cassius Benallie<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>A 27-year-old man from New Mexico has been sentenced to 166 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release after shooting a man on Ute Mountain Ute reservation.<\/p>\n<p>Lovell Cassius Benallie was found guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm during a violent crime on the reservation on Aug. 24, 2023.<\/p>\n<p>That day, Benallie and \u201can associate\u201d traveled north and west to the Ute Mountain Ute Casino to gamble, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>Afterward, Benallie went to the Ute Mountain Ute Travel Center.<\/p>\n<p>There, he \u201capproached an elderly Navajo man preparing to use the laundry facility,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n<p>In an interaction \u201clasted about eighteen seconds,\u201d Benallie ordered the elderly man to \u201cGive me all your money,\u201d and pointed a 9 mm gun at him.<\/p>\n<p>When the man replied, \u201cWhat money,\u201d \u201cBenallie aimed and fired the gun at the man\u2019s leg,\u201d and then \u201cfled the scene,\u201d according to the press release.<\/p>\n<p>The victim was \u201cairlifted to Grand Junction for medical treatment.\u201d Though he survived, he suffered serious and \u201cenduring\u201d injuries.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t Benallie\u2019s first felony.<\/p>\n<p>He has \u201cseveral prior felony convictions, including a conviction for aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon in Farmington,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGun violence will not be tolerated on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation,\u201d said Acting United States Attorney for the District of Colorado Matt Kirsch in the news release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis defendant \u2026 shot a total stranger during an attempted robbery. Any such act of violence on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation gets the full attention of FBI Denver,\u201d said Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek in the release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will continue to support the Bureau of Indian Affairs and those who live on the reservation by investigating criminal acts and removing the perpetrators from the community,\u201d Michalek said.<\/p>\n<p>The BIA and FBI Durango conducted the investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>place last summer at the Ute Mountain Ute Travel Center<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,138,29,144,1879,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter","tag-towaoc","tag-ute-mountain-casino","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24248","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=24248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78456,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24248\/revisions\/78456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24248"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}