<\/p>\n
A Mancos man accused of 32 criminal charges \u2013 including 12 for attempted murder of law enforcement officers \u2013 faces a possible lifelong jail sentence if convicted on all counts, according to sentencing parameters.<\/p>\n
Casey Dee Larsen, 59, heard the charges and potential penalties during an arraignment April 4.<\/p>\n
Charges filed against Larsen by 22nd District Attorney Will Furse include six counts of attempted first-degree murder, six counts of attempted second-degree murder, six counts of menacing, two counts of vehicular assault, six counts of vehicular eluding and six counts of obstructing a peace officer.<\/p>\n
If convicted with consecutive sentences, possible jail time ranges from a low of 57 years to a high of 660 years.<\/p>\n
Larsen is being held on a $1 million bond for alleged criminal acts during a high-speed chase March 10 that injured two Montezuma County sheriff deputies.<\/p>\n
When asked whether he understood the charges and penalties, Larsen responded \u201cas explained\u201d and said he had no questions.<\/p>\n
Larsen\u2019s public defender, John Moran, told the court that Larsen is a military veteran with a history of mental illness.<\/p>\n
A request for a competency hearing is likely, Moran said. The defense is reaching out to Veterans Affairs for more information on Larsen.<\/p>\n
Larsen was charged with attempted first-degree and second-degree murder for each of the six law enforcement officers he allegedly threatened with his vehicle during a 50-mile chase that started on the West Fork of the Dolores River and went through Dolores and Mancos.<\/p>\n
As two deputies lay down spike strips on the Colorado Highway 145 bridge in Dolores, Larsen allegedly swerved and forced them to jump off the bridge, causing injury to both officers. A status conference on the case is set for April 18, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 3.<\/p>\n
jmimiaga @the-journal.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" faces 32 charges; potential for lifelong jail sentence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,168,13,832,184],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-94751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-crime","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-mental-illness","tag-veterans-affairs"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94751","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=94751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94751"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=94751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}