{"id":37027,"date":"2022-12-01T00:32:39","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T07:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drone-helps-find-suspect-hiding-under-cloak-of-darkness-north-of-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:35:23","slug":"drone-helps-find-suspect-hiding-under-cloak-of-darkness-north-of-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drone-helps-find-suspect-hiding-under-cloak-of-darkness-north-of-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone helps find suspect hiding under cloak of darkness north of Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a053ebc9-2d0a-5360-b0bd-ef4f4ac4e6ee&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1290\" alt=\"Law enforcement used a drone with night vision to help arrest a man suspected of vehicular theft. (Courtesy of Durango Police Department)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Law enforcement used a drone with night vision to help arrest a man suspected of vehicular theft. (Courtesy of Durango Police Department)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s deputy Steven Reiter was patrolling U.S. Highway 550 near Hermosa on Monday night when he spotted a Ford F-150 with no taillights traveling southbound at 90 mph.<\/p>\n<p>Reiter turned on his emergency lights and siren and gave chase in a pursuit that continued at high speeds northbound on County Road 203 and then onto Hermosa Creek Road (County Road 201). Deputy Reiter broke off pursuit along Hermosa Creek because of the danger of driving fast on a gravel road. And because the road dead ends.<\/p>\n<p>During the pursuit, Durango Police Department officers learned the pickup had been stolen from the 700 block of East Third Avenue in Durango.<\/p>\n<p>Reiter was joined by four other deputies about 1\u00bd miles up Hermosa Creek, and a spike strip was deployed. It wasn\u2019t long before the driver of the pickup, later identified as Ronnie James, 48, came back down the road and blew all four tires on the truck when he hit the strip.<\/p>\n<p>James then ran from the vehicle and into thick brush where deputies lost sight of him. That\u2019s when they called Durango police officer and drone pilot Dan Kellermeyer who arrived on scene at 8:50 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>Within three minutes of liftoff the infrared camera on the drone, which detects heat, located James hiding 30 yards west of the road. Deputies closed in and arrested him without further incident.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-block-embed-youtube naviga-video-embed\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z2vSG8TNKwQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>James\u2019 last known address was in Aztec. Whether he has any prior criminal history is not yet known, said representatives at DPD and the Sheriff\u2019s Office. He was charged with aggravated motor vehicle theft and vehicular eluding, both felonies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve had some good wins with the drone, as far as looking for bad guys,\u201d Kellermeyer said. \u201cWe found the woman who escaped from the hospital who was an FBI fugitive. I don\u2019t remember the exact dates but I believe it was in March or April that we captured some armed robbery suspects on the river trail using the drone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a release issued by DPD about the arrest, the drone is praised as a \u201cgreat piece of technology that serves the whole community\u201d and that the department wants the community to know how it will be utilized.<\/p>\n<p>Kellermeyer elaborated on that while talking with <em id=\"emphasis-b2031b993af61f7abbb0ae3c3b0398af\">The Durango Herald <\/em>about the incident.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think when people hear drone, or especially in a government use, there\u2019s maybe some concerns that some people have,\u201d Kellermeyer said. \u201cAnd we want people to know that we are intentional about the way we are building our policies and using drones to focus on public safety. We are not doing random surveillance or looking for crime. We solely deploy the drone in response to specific incidents in progress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to searching for suspected offenders, the DPD\u2019s four drones can be deployed for missing persons, search and rescue, hazardous spills, disaster response, and crash investigations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve put the drone out on three different fatal accidents that we\u2019ve had in the city,\u201d Kellermeyer said. \u201cAnd it only takes six or seven minutes to take a bunch of photographs on that scene that we can then take back to our office and stitch together into a map and do our measurements on that model, as opposed to spending an hour-and-a-half on scene doing manual measurements of everything. So that significantly cuts down on the amount of time that we\u2019re processing accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the release about the incident, Durango Police Chief Bob Brammer praised the teamwork between the DPD and Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s also a reminder that residents need to lock their cars and secure keys to help prevent these types of crimes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-419d49cad385e448c64b2f0c99901a1b\"><a href=\"mailto:gjaros@durangoherald.com\">gjaros@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>accused of stealing pickup, leading police on chase<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1065,28,52,51,74],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-police-department","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-police","tag-theft"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37027","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=37027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83532,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37027\/revisions\/83532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37027"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}