{"id":30981,"date":"2023-10-25T17:08:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T23:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/towaoc-man-accused-of-vehicular-assault-crash-victim-airlifted-out-of-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:32:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:32:28","slug":"towaoc-man-accused-of-vehicular-assault-crash-victim-airlifted-out-of-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/towaoc-man-accused-of-vehicular-assault-crash-victim-airlifted-out-of-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Towaoc man accused of vehicular assault; crash victim airlifted out of Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=192b808a-c004-553f-8e12-90d597360ae3&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" alt=\"\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>A Towaoc man faces charges including eluding an officer and vehicular assault after colliding with a vehicle Saturday night and severely injuring a passenger.<\/p>\n<p>Cortez Police officer Joseph Yen reported that he attempted to pull over a dark blue Dodge Durango about 10:30 p.m. Saturday around Linden and Main streets because the vehicle was going 46 mph in a 25 mph zone.<\/p>\n<p>As Yen pursued the Dodge, it swerved into the driver\u2019s side of a white Hyundai Santa Fe, which held five people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt appeared to be a deliberate act since there were no other vehicles in the roadway,\u201d Yen said.<\/p>\n<p>The driver of the Dodge was identified as Gabriel Peabody of Towaoc. He was detained by Yen and officer Kaden Sharp.<\/p>\n<p>The driver of the Hyundai, who was not identified in the police report, said Peabody drove as if he was \u201cintentionally targeting\u201d the vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>The Hyundai sustained significant damage, and air bags were deployed. A passenger was extracted from the Hyundai and taken to Southwest Memorial Hospital with \u201csevere\u201d injuries, then airlifted out of Cortez.<\/p>\n<p>The passenger\u2019s injuries included subdermal hematoma, fractured ribs, pulmonary contusion, spleen laceration, kidney lacerations and a sacral fracture.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodge, which was registered to Samantha Porambo, had significant damage to the front end. Peabody was unable to provide proof of insurance and was found to be driving without a valid driver\u2019s license.<\/p>\n<p>According to the police report, Peabody started crying and told officers that he had smoked \u201ca little\u201d marijuana before driving.<\/p>\n<p>At the Montezuma County Detention Center, Peabody was put on felony hold for vehicular eluding, vehicular assault, speeding, driving without a valid driver\u2019s license, driving without proof of insurance and driving without a seat belt.<\/p>\n<p>He is scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 7 at 9:30 a.m. for his return filing of charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suspect allegedly was eluding police and speeding before crash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,168,28,29,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30981","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=30981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81272,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30981\/revisions\/81272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30981"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}