{"id":47746,"date":"2021-03-26T20:44:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T02:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-who-led-police-on-rv-chase-in-cortez-gets-18-months-in-prison\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:40:15","slug":"man-who-led-police-on-rv-chase-in-cortez-gets-18-months-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-who-led-police-on-rv-chase-in-cortez-gets-18-months-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who led police on RV chase in Cortez gets 18 months in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=86d8807d-680d-4131-a90f-402e6285243c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1294\" height=\"967\" alt=\"Ritter\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Ritter<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The man who led police on a slow-speed RV chase along Main Street in Cortez last month was sentenced to 18 months in prison after accepting a plea agreement from the 22nd Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Ritter, 41, pleaded guilty Thursday to vehicular eluding, a Class Five felony, and opted to go to immediate sentencing.<\/p>\n<p>Vehicular eluding occurs when an individual is driving recklessly while being pursued by police officers.<\/p>\n<p>The plea agreement\u2019s terms dictated that Ritter would spend between 12 and 18 months in the Colorado Department of Corrections.<\/p>\n<p>Montezuma County District Court Judge Doug Walker, at Assistant District Attorney Will Furse\u2019s request, sentenced Ritter to the full 18 months.<\/p>\n<p>On the morning of Feb. 5, police pulled Ritter over for a traffic infraction near the Hampton Inn on Hawkins Street. Ritter fled in his RV and ran over spikes set by police, blowing a rear tire.<\/p>\n<p>Officers followed Ritter in a slow-speed pursuit as he drove west along Main Street and then north along U.S. Highway 491 until he turned onto County Road Y.<\/p>\n<p>Ritter\u2019s RV got stuck in mud near the intersection of County Road Y and County Road 16, where police apprehended him without issues.<\/p>\n<p>Ritter was initially charged with several other crimes, including criminal impersonation, violation of bail bond conditions, resisting arrest, violation of a protection order, reckless driving and unlawful possession of a controlled substance.<\/p>\n<p>According to Furse, Ritter also has at least one pending and active warrant out of Jefferson County.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:anicotera@the-journal.com\">anicotera@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>to vehicular eluding, a Class 5 felony<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47746","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=47746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87239,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47746\/revisions\/87239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47746"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}