{"id":46568,"date":"2021-05-26T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-arrested-for-pointing-gun-at-group-outside-durango-bar\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:32:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:32:34","slug":"man-arrested-for-pointing-gun-at-group-outside-durango-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-arrested-for-pointing-gun-at-group-outside-durango-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Man arrested for pointing gun at group outside Durango bar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Blotter
Blotter lights<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Durango Police Department arrested a Bloomfield man around 2 a.m. Saturday after the man, sitting in the driver\u2019s seat of a car, allegedly pointed a pistol out the window at people standing outside El Rancho Tavern in Durango.<\/p>\n

The man, Ricky Kempf, 31, was arrested on suspicion of criminal attempt of first-degree murder, a Class 2 felony; being in possession of a firearm while intoxicated, or prohibited use of a weapon; and driving while under the influence. Kempf remained in custody Wednesday at the La Plata County Jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt actually started a little before the incident at 2 a.m. when officers were downtown and they heard a loud pop, like a firework or a shot,\u201d said Durango Police Department Cmdr. Jacob Dunlop.<\/p>\n

An officer responded to the approximate location of the noise on Narrow Gauge Avenue, where the officer contacted people near a vehicle who said they hadn\u2019t seen anything, Dunlop said, reading from the officer\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

About 20 to 30 minutes later, the officer noticed the same vehicle stopped and blocking a lane of traffic on 10th Street outside El Rancho Tavern.<\/p>\n

A Durango woman walked to the vehicle, had an argument with the driver and walked away. The officer reportedly saw the barrel of a pistol pointing out the driver\u2019s window. It appeared to the officer that Kempf was pointing the gun at a group of three people, including the woman and her husband.<\/p>\n

Durango police initiated a high-risk arrest, which involved pulling the occupants out of the vehicle with weapons drawn, having them kneel or lay on the ground and handcuffing them, Dunlop said.<\/p>\n

The driver, Kempf, and two passengers were taken into custody. The passengers were not charged and later released.<\/p>\n

Two handguns were recovered from the vehicle, and when officers returned to the location where they originally heard what sounded like a gunshot on Narrow Gauge Avenue, they recovered a shell casing, Dunlop said.<\/p>\n

The motive for the incident was unclear, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur investigation did not reveal that they (Kempf and the married couple) knew each other prior to that evening,\u201d he said, aside from an earlier encounter at a bar on Eighth Street in which Kempf allegedly made a comment about the husband\u2019s attire. The encounter did not appear to be aggressive, Dunlop said.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the evening before the encounter at El Rancho, Kempf said he was going to \u201cshoot up the place,\u201d according to a passenger statement during the police investigation. The passenger did not specify which location Kempf planned to shoot up.<\/p>\n

Kempf has a court hearing scheduled for early June.<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspect also accused of prohibited use of a weapon, drunken driving <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,314,1065,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-downtown-durango","tag-durango-police-department","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46568","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=46568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86935,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46568\/revisions\/86935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46568"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}