{"id":24279,"date":"2024-12-23T16:18:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T23:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/towaoc-man-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-assaulting-bia-officer-at-casino\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:51:15","slug":"towaoc-man-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-assaulting-bia-officer-at-casino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/towaoc-man-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-assaulting-bia-officer-at-casino\/","title":{"rendered":"Towaoc man gets 5 years in prison for assaulting BIA officer at casino"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=c758802f-04af-4547-8a92-a22c26e2b17c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" alt=\"The Ute Mountain Casino and Hotel. (Journal file photo)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The Ute Mountain Casino and Hotel. (Journal file photo)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>A 44-year-old man from Towaoc who pleaded guilty to assaulting a federal officer earlier this year has been sentenced to 60 months in prison and three years of supervised release.<\/p>\n<p>On April 5, a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer responded to \u201ca report of an intoxicated person\u201d at the Ute Mountain Ute Casino, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>There, the intoxicated person, later identified as Daniel Lehi, \u201clunged at the officer and struck him in the face,\u201d according to the news release.<\/p>\n<p>Security personnel backed up the officer, and \u201cLehi continued to fight until officers were able to subdue him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lehi has a history of assaulting law enforcement officers, and that history was taken into account when he was sentenced.<\/p>\n<p>In the news release, FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek said that attacking \u201ca federal officer simply doing his job is unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe fully support the officer who is a victim in this case and are steadfast in our commitment to pursuing justice in cases involving assaults on law enforcement officers,\u201d Michalek said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAssault on a law enforcement officer is a serious offense, and this defendant received a serious sentence for his actions,\u201d said Matt Kirsch, acting U.S. attorney, in the news release.<\/p>\n<p>The BIA and FBI office in Durango spearheaded the investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>release, he has an additional three years of \u2018supervised release\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24279","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=24279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78467,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24279\/revisions\/78467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24279"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}