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Evidence found in sewer leads to felony charges

Aspen Police Officer Dan Davis knew the drill.

It was late February and he’d just caught a 22-year-old local man and a juvenile in a locked bathroom at Rio Grande Park with the smell of freshly burnt marijuana hanging in the air. The local man, Eduardo Alvarado, told Davis they were “chilling,” denied having any drugs on him and allowed the officer to search him, according to documents filed in Pitkin County District Court.

“I was pretty certain that any drugs that had been in his possession had been dropped into the toilet and flushed prior to our entry,” Davis wrote in an affidavit he filed with the court in March. “I did not find any drugs on Alvarado and told him he was free to leave.”



However, a city of Aspen parks employee later retrieved a black container with marijuana inside along with two cans of beer from the “fecal waste collector” directly beneath the men’s bathroom, the affidavit states. A sticker on the marijuana container indicated it had been bought that morning at a local dispensary.

The 16-year-old boy also admitted they had been smoking marijuana and told Davis that Alavarado had bought it, given it to him and later dropped it into the toilet when officers appeared outside the locked bathroom door.




Based on the sticker on the marijuana container, an Aspen detective was able to obtain video of Alvarado purchasing the marijuana wearing the same clothing he wore when caught in the bathroom that night, the affidavit states.

Alvarado was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and dispensing marijuana to a minor, both felonies, in an arrest warrant signed by a District Court judge in March. He was advised of the charges Monday after he was recently arrested in Garfield County.

jauslander@aspentimes.com

Crime


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