YOUR AD HERE »

Felony DUI for man who left Aspen emergency room

A local man with a long criminal history was cited for felony DUI on Sunday after leaving Aspen Valley Hospital’s emergency room under the influence of narcotics, according to a police report.

A nurse warned Benjamin Levy, 30, not to drive because of the medication he’d been given, but he apparently didn’t heed the advice, according to the report. So the nurse called a drunken-driving hotline and reported that Levy was driving a white Audi station wagon, the report states.

An Aspen police officer spotted the vehicle pulling into the Local’s Corner gas station not long after and approached the driver’s side door. The officer noticed Levy wearing an AVH hospital bracelet and discovered that his license is suspended for failure to install an interlock device, the report states.



“During my conversation with Levy, I could hear that his speech was slurred,” Officer Marcin Debski wrote in the report.

Levy refused to perform roadside sobriety tests and had a breath-alcohol content of 0.0, according to the report.




Debski called the AVH nurse, who explained that Levy “was under the influence of narcotics and should not be operating a motor vehicle,” the report states.

Levy also refused to provide a sample of his blood for testing.

Levy, who has three previous DUI convictions, was charged with felony DUI because it is his fourth, according to the report. He also was charged with driving with a suspended license, and had failure-to-appear warrants from Garfield County Court and Arapahoe County Court and another misdemeanor failure-to-appear warrant from the Denver Marshall’s Office.

Levy has been arrested repeatedly since 2013, when he fired a gun inside his Woody Creek apartment and the bullet entered his neighbor’s apartment. No one was injured in that incident, though Levy also was charged with DUI later that same day.

His latest arrest before Sunday occurred in August, when he was found unconscious next to a hypodermic needle he later admitted contained heroin.

jauslander@aspentimes.com