{"id":68662,"date":"2017-03-24T23:43:29","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T05:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-suspected-of-biting-firefighter-charged-with-assault\/"},"modified":"2017-03-25T05:43:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-25T05:43:29","slug":"man-suspected-of-biting-firefighter-charged-with-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-suspected-of-biting-firefighter-charged-with-assault\/","title":{"rendered":"Man suspected of biting firefighter charged with assault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=ab85f07c-eeb6-4e4e-9781-002059c157e9&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Benally\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Benally<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>An Arizona man suspected of hitting and biting a firefighter who tried to help him after a rollover crash south of Hesperus was charged Friday with felony assault and obstruction of a police officer.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Benally, 20, faces up to six years in prison if convicted of felony assault.<\/p>\n<p>The incident occurred about 3:45 p.m. Feb. 23 in the 20600 block of La Plata Highway (Colorado Highway 140), about four miles south of Hesperus.<\/p>\n<p>Benally was a passenger in the car that rolled over. The occupants initially tried to leave the scene, but firefighters and the Colorado State Patrol kept them there.<\/p>\n<p>The Colorado State Patrol took the driver into custody on suspicion of drunken driving. Benally and one other occupant were sitting on the side of the road when a firefighter attempted to check on them.<\/p>\n<p>That is when Benally started fighting with the firefighter and bit him on the finger, causing his hand to bleed, according to the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p>Benally also fought with a sheriff\u2019s deputy and state patrol trooper when they tried to control him and place him in handcuffs, Bender said.<\/p>\n<p>A deputy took Benally to Mercy Regional Medical Center for observation, and once there, he told three deputies he knew where they lived and would do a drive-by shooting of their houses, the Sheriff\u2019s Office said.<\/p>\n<p>He is free on a personal recognizance bail, meaning he didn\u2019t have to pay anything but agrees to show up for scheduled court appearances.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:shane@durangoherald.com\">shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emergency worker was trying to help after roll-over crash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[585,133,866],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-assault-general","tag-courts","tag-hesperus"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68662","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=68662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68662"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}