{"id":28293,"date":"2024-04-08T00:08:12","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T06:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-who-showed-up-to-court-high-is-arrested-on-drug-charge\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:26:09","slug":"man-who-showed-up-to-court-high-is-arrested-on-drug-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/man-who-showed-up-to-court-high-is-arrested-on-drug-charge\/","title":{"rendered":"Man who showed up to court high is arrested on drug charge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Drevan
Drevan Begay<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A Farmington man who showed up to court high on marijuana was arrested three days later for allegedly possessing methamphetamine.<\/p>\n

Drevan Begay, 23, admitted to Chief District Judge Curtis Gurley that he had \u201csmoked a joint,\u201d and then walked to court April 1, leading Gurley to put restrictions on Begay\u2019s conditions of release. However, three days later, Farmington Police arrested Begay in the street near the Journey Inn for possession of methamphetamine.<\/p>\n

Begay was scheduled to be arraigned April 1 on nine charges in two incidents including armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery on a peace officer, resisting, evading or obstructing an officer, interference with communications and concealing his identity.<\/p>\n

Gurley expressed concern to both the defense and prosecution that Begay might not be coherent enough to understand what was happening, if he showed up to court high from cannabis and alcohol. He also admonished Begay and told him, \u201cYou are not to use any more drugs or alcohol, period.\u201d<\/p>\n

The charges are in connection to a Jan. 17 incident at the Farmington Inn and a Jan. 21 shoplifting at the East Main Safeway. Begay also recently was a witness in an incident at the Journey Inn, in which a man was stabbed in the face by attackers.<\/p>\n

The new charges of possession of a controlled substance and crossing at other than crosswalks are in connection to an incident at 3:04 a.m. March 4 near the intersection of Walnut and Apache streets. Begay was seen by police, and appeared to \u201cact suspicious,\u201d as if he wanted to avoid police, according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

Farmington Police stated that they saw him illegally cross the street, and stand near the police cruiser, stating that he was \u201chomeless\u201d and was \u201clooking for \u2018Lola\u2019 because she stole five dollars from him.\u201d Begay did provide police with his name, but continued to act suspicious, according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

When he reportedly \u201csounded nervous\u201d asking \u201cif he could leave,\u201d police decided to attempt to arrest him. At which point, they noticed a \u201cplastic folded baggie on the asphalt next to Draven\u2019s foot.\u201d Police said in the probable cause statement \u201cthe bag appeared to be out of place\u201d without \u201cdirt, debris or dust on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police suspects the bag had methamphetamine inside of it, and when they questioned Begay, he reportedly said \u201cLola maybe dropped it,\u201d according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n

Police stated they decided to search Begay, who reportedly said \u201che had a point in his pocket,\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s what meth heads do,\u201d according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n

Police reportedly found the \u201cpoint\u201d which is slang for \u201ca syringe that is commonly used to inject drugs into your body,\u201d according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n

Police in the probable cause statement said that dashcam footage showed Begay drop the baggie, which reportedly had a \u201ctotal gross weight\u201d of .07 grams.<\/p>\n

In court on April 1, Assistant District Attorney Gertrude Lee stated that \u201cthere is a public safety concern\u201d with regards to Begay. The two cases prior to the possession arrest involved alcohol.<\/p>\n

In the first case, Begay allegedly threatened to stab the manager of the Farmington Inn over a bottle of Yukon Jack. Begay reportedly threatened a woman, who he believed\u201d stole the bottle from him and gave it to another guest at the Farmington Inn,\u201d according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

The woman, Jennifer Lee, called the Farmington Police Department at 5:13 p.m. Jan. 17 screaming into the phone, that she did not have the bottle of Yukon Jack and begging Begay to \u201cstop it,\u201d according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

Begay also reportedly threatened Fredrick Henry, the hotel manager, who went to the room to check on Lee. Dispatch could hear Henry screaming that he \u201cdidn\u2019t want any trouble,\u201d and it was alleged that at the time Begay was on top of Henry on the bed pointing a knife at him according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

The Jan. 21 incident happened at 4:20 p.m., and it also involved a bottle of Yukon Jack and Jack Daniels Honey, which Begay reportedly shoplifted from East Main Safeway. He allegedly walked away from the store and when police tried to contact him, Begay reportedly would not stop, according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

Once Begay was arrested and brought to the San Juan County Detention Center, he allegedly \u201cspit\u201d in the face of the detention officer and \u201cstruck\u201d the officer in the eye, according to the statement of probable cause.<\/p>\n

Begay waived his preliminary hearing on the Jan. 21 charge, which sent the case to district court. However, Gurley would not arraign Begay because of his alleged intoxication.<\/p>\n

Gurley changed the conditions of release to a Level 4, which means that Begay will be required to do weekly check-ins with Pretrial Services, which would consist of drug and alcohol testing.<\/p>\n

Begay was told to return to court at 10 a.m. April 15 for an arraignment of the charges from the incidents in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Begay reportedly found in possession of methamphetamine <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80368,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28293\/revisions\/80368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28293"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}