Marquez to enter plea March 31 in fatal hit-and-run case

Judge denies defense’s request to set a bond for Marquez

BY CORINNE WESTEMAN CWESTEMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

e case against Ruben Marquez, the alleged driver in the fatal hitand-run outside a Golden bar, is moving forward after a three-day preliminary hearing.

A judge ruled March 14 that there’s enough evidence against Marquez to bind over all 17 charges against him for trial. e judge also ruled Marquez will continue to be held without bond. He’s scheduled to enter a plea at 8:30 a.m. March 31 at the Je erson County Courthouse. Marquez, 29, is facing rst-degree murder, vehicular homicide and multiple assault charges for allegedly driving a truck into a crowd of people outside e Rock Rest Lodge on Oct. 9.

Adrian Ponce, 26, was killed in the incident, and at least four others were injured, including Rock Rest employees.

Marquez’s preliminary hearing — which ran Feb. 3, March 2 and March 14 — was formatted like a small-scale trial with both the prosecution and defense presenting witnesses in their favor. A preliminary hearing determines whether there’s sufficient evidence for the case to proceed through the judicial system.

As Judge Lindsay VanGilder summarized in her rulings, the entire case hinges on who was behind the wheel at the time the truck drove into the crowd.

Marquez’s defense attorneys asserted that co-defendant Ernesto Avila, who owns the truck, was the driver that night and that he confessed to doing so in a recorded interview with law enforcement.

However, the prosecution argued that, based on witness statements, Marquez was behind the wheel during the incident, and that Marquez and Avila exited and switched seats shortly after. Prosecutors also argued that Avila’s supposed confession shouldn’t be taken at face value, as he’s clearly intoxicated in the footage, and VanGilder agreed that Avila was talking in circles.

Avila, 25, was driving when a Jeffco Sheriff’s deputy stopped the truck a few blocks away from the Rock Rest. He’s been charged with one count of felony accessory, has pleaded not guilty, and is scheduled for trial in late August.

VanGilder ruled March 6 that Avila will have a separate trial from Marquez, if the latter’s case goes to trial.

She recognized how separate trials would have duplicative evidence and create “difficulties for the victims and the survivors of the deceased victim.” However, as she stated at Avila’s March 6 arraignment, she feared having a joint trial would create an appellate record and “require retrials for both defendants.”

The prosecution’s case

In the general facts of the case, as VanGilder summarized, is that three cousins — Marquez, Avila and Jose Loera — went to The Rock Rest Lodge on Oct. 8.

At bar close on Oct. 9, Marquez’s group got into a verbal argument with Ponce’s group outside. The verbal confrontation escalated to a physical one, with one witness reporting that Ponce punched Marquez.

Avila’s truck was parked outside the Rock Rest, on roughly the southeast side of the building. Avila reportedly got into the truck, but it wouldn’t start. He left the keys inside, based on what he told investigators, and exited the vehicle.

As bar employees were outside trying to break up the fight, Avila and Marquez got back in the truck. However, the prosecution posited that Marquez was behind the wheel this time and intentionally drove into the crowd.

When describing the driver, witnesses gave a mix of descriptors, including bald, short, heavier-set Hispanic male wearing a white T-shirt with neck and face tattoos. These match Marquez’s appearance on Oct. 9.

The bar manager, who was within a few feet of the truck when it hit the crowd, later picked Marquez out of a photo lineup. He told investigators he was 100% certain Marquez drove the truck into the crowd.

Avila, who was described on the night as a taller, skinnier Hispanic male with short hair wearing a dark T-shirt, is believed to be a passenger at the time. Some witnesses described the passenger and the driver either voluntarily exiting the vehicle or being pulled out, and switching seats shortly after the incident.

Around that time, the truck drove away from the bar toward South Golden Road, as seen on surveillance footage from a nearby business.

The truck didn’t travel far and ultimately returned to the Rock Rest, likely to pick up Loera. At least one witness said Loera was in the truck when it hit the crowd but was pulled out afterward and ran away, while Loera told investigators he wasn’t in the truck, was running away and came back when he heard a commotion.

Witness photos confirm Loera was outside the truck at some point after it hit the crowd.

As the truck was sitting in front of the Rock Rest on South Vernon Road, a Jeffco Sheriff’s deputy stationed his patrol car right behind it. The deputy didn’t see anyone enter or exit the vehicle, and it drove a few blocks before it finally stopped along 10th Avenue.

The deputy and other law enforcement questioned the three men, with a state trooper interviewing Avila on video. The trooper asked Avila who was driving the truck when it hit the people, and Avila responded, “I was.”

However, as VanGilder pointed out in her ruling, Avila twice said, “I told my cousin to go, go, go.” He also said, “At first, my cousin was driving.” e prosecution argued to give more credibility to the witnesses who were sober, mostly employees. And while the bar manager identied Marquez as the driver, another employee described the driver as a skinnier man, the defense pointed out.

VanGilder also noted how, in a later interview at the sheriff’s office, Avila claimed he took over as the driver when the truck was stopped in Mount Vernon Road. Initially, he was positive he wasn’t driving the truck when it hit the crowd; but when pressed, he said he wasn’t sure because he blacked out.

The defense’s case roughout the three-day hearing, Marquez’s defense attorneys stressed the number of con icting eyewitness accounts. Some witnesses’ statements contradict each other, and some witnesses gave differing details at the scene than they did in later interviews.

Some didn’t see the driver at the time of the crash, and others gave a description that better described Avila than Marquez, the defense attorneys argued. ey also pointed out how some witnesses never described Avila and Marquez switching seats after the truck hit the crowd.

Of the seven witnesses who described Marquez as the driver, the defense claimed ve of the accounts were misleading.

One was Ponce’s friend who, the defense argued, claimed either Avila or Marquez could’ve been the driver. e attorneys also believed that JCSO’s reports summarizing witness statements that Marquez was the driver contradicted the recorded interviews at the scene. ey also called into question a witness who didn’t give any description of the driver at the scene, but later “magically remembers everything … in an unrecorded, undocumented phone call” with investigators, they described. Ultimately, the defense argued, there were as many statements Avila was the driver as there are statements Marquez was.

“Mr. Marquez is a rougher-looking individual,” one of the attorneys said. “ ere are certain things that stick out about him in a stressful situation — that are going to stick in the mind of the viewer.” as a suspected DUI case on Feb. 13. He ed police custody and hid near the Mines campus, admitting later that he knew he had multiple warrants for his arrest. e a davit stated Romero has a recent criminal history of forgery, theft and DUI cases. He also has a revoked driver’s license as a habitual tra c o ender.

Despite the proximity to campus, Mines o cials have clari ed Romero is not associated with the university.

After he was arrested, investigators reportedly found that he was driving a stolen car and carrying an ID that was not his own.

K-9 Gra t, who’d been with JCSO since 2015, died at the scene Feb. 13.

Deputy Zachary Oliver, his handler, has described how Gra t was a very driven and obedient dog, who never backed down from a task. He was a very social dog who loved attention both with Oliver’s family and JCSO deputies.

“He was my partner, my best friend, and most of all, my family,” Oliver said at Gra t’s memorial service Feb. 27. “ ... He gave his life that day. He took a bullet that wasn’t meant for him.” e sheri ’s o ce has set up a memorial fund in Gra t’s honor, and all donations made through March will be in his honor. For more information, visit je cosheri .co/Gra tFund.

Study: Geothermal

When it comes to “kicking natural gas” and reducing a home’s carbon footprint, geothermal heating & cooling is the “gold standard.” But it’s extremely expensive to implement as a retrofit and still quite expensive on new construction.

My friend, Martin Voelker, a leader with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, recently replaced his gas forced air heating system with geothermal, and the cost for drilling the 300-footdeep wells in his backyard was $18,000, which included running the pipes into his house but didn’t include the heat pump itself. Even though such a project would garner a 30% rebate under the Inflation Reduction Act, that’s still a heavy lift for an individual homeowner.

Advertisement

I know of another home which installed geothermal pipes horizontally in their large backyard at far less cost.

New construction is more affordable, because you can have the wells drilled within the footprint of the future home before the foundation is laid. And if it’s an entire subdivision, such as the Geos Community in Arvada, the cost is reduced because all the wells can be drilled one after the other.

In that scenario, each home still has its own geothermal well, but what if you could drill a geothermal well that was extensive enough to feed multiple heat pumps in multiple buildings?

That was the concept proposed by a group of Harvard students in Ivory Inno-

Did You Know? Potting Soil Can Be Flammable

Earlier this month, a Jefferson County home almost burned down. Thanks to a quick response by the local fire department, damage was contained and is estimated at $30-50,000.

Here’s what happened, as documented by surveillance cameras: A person tried to put out a cigarette by sticking it in the soil of an indoor potted plant. Unfortunately, the plant was in potting soil that contained nitrogen, and within a few hours the soil started smoking and quite suddenly burst into flames.

When told of this, David Dlugasch, one of our broker associates said that the exact same scenario caused his house he had sold in Gunnison to be burned to the ground the day after he sold it. This problem was a surprise to me, so I wanted to share it with readers. Below is a picture I took of the ingredients in a commonly available potting soil. Nowhere on the package does it mention that it is flammable and could cause a house fire. vation’s annual Hack-A-House competition, for which they won first place in the “Environmental Solutions and Construction Technology” category.

The Harvard students, under the name “Team Beckwith,” did a case study of a 49-house community in South Boston. The concept involved installing buried geothermal pipes in the homes’ combined backyard space.

Here are some excerpts from the arti-

How Does Geothermal Work?

Geothermal heating does not require there to be a thermal feature such as a hot spring. In fact, if you dig down about 10 feet anywhere at our latitude, you’ll find that the soil temperature is about 55ºF year-round. By circulating a fluid through a pipe either vertically to 300’ or horizontally if you have enough space, you can pre-heat that liquid to 55º and have a heat pump raise that temperature to 100º or so for heating purposes either by radiant floor heating, baseboards or forced air. This is more efficient than an air-source heat pump system which takes in outdoor air as cold at –10º and works much harder to achieve the desired temperature. In the summer the 55º geothermal fluid requires even less energy to be cooled further for cooling your home.

cle I read on www.Probuilder.com, which I have linked to this column on our blog, www.GoldenREblog.com:

“The novelty of geothermal energy is there,” Team Beckwith says. “The reason it’s not invested in is the capital, and the scale”….The team intends to do further research and revise their 24hour-made plan, and are already looking for connections to make their proposal a reality.

A vendor for both geothermal and air source heat pump systems that I recommend is Sensible Heating & Cooling, 720-876-7166, which I have mentioned in previous columns.

Comcast Remote Can Be Reset to Have a 30-Second Skip Button

Last week I complained that Comcast’s remote, unlike Dish Network’s & DirecTV’s, does not have a button for skipping forward 30 seconds on recorded programs. A reader sent instructions for reprogramming the 5-minute FF button to 30 seconds. Briefly, to enable 30second skip, do the following: While watching a channel, press the Exit button thrice. Press 0030 on the keypad. The page down button will skip back 15 seconds. I have posted the full instructions at www.GoldenREblog.com

Development Site Just Listed by Austin Pottorff

$1,600,000

The helpful hardware man said he was aware of the danger and reminded me that nitrogen fertilizer can be used to create a bomb, as in the Oklahoma City bombing.

This parcel at 17205 W. 12th Ave. is a multifamily zoned parcel ready for continued rental income, or ripe for redevelopment. Directly adjacent to the city boundary, this 19,300-square-foot parcel could possibly be annexed into the City of Golden. This land offers proximity to parks, trails, grocery, dining, and public transit. Golden's King Soopers Marketplace is a couple blocks away, and the Denver West Office Park, Coors Technology Center, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado Mills

Shopping area, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Jefferson County Government Center, schools and downtown Golden are all within a few minutes of the site. Bell Middle School and Golden High School are a short distance away. Located within an Opportunity Zone, this parcel is a prime redevelopment option. Take a narrated aerial video tour at www. GoldenDevelopmentSite.info. Then call Austin Pottorff at 970-281-9071 for a showing.

$675,000

This is a great duplex at 1802-1804 Simms Street! It works for a motherin-law and family or as a 2-rental unit with great rental income. One unit, 1804 Simms, is 1600 sq. ft. and has 3 large bedrooms with double closets. The primary bedroom has a 3/4 bath. It has a large carpeted living room with a non-functional wood-burning fireplace. The kitchen is open with an eating area and a laundry closet with washer and dryer. 1802 Simms measures 950 sq. ft. Its primary bedroom has new carpeting, new paint, and a double closet. Another room is a non-conforming bedroom and can be used as an office or hobby room. The entrance has a foyer with slate flooring that leads into a very large and bright living room with hardwood floors. The eat-in kitchen can use some updating and has a newer bay window. Each unit has a well-maintained fenced yard, great for entertaining. The two-car garage is shared, and there is extra parking in the driveway. There is a basement area under 1802 Simms accessed from the back of the structure. This is a solid brick duplex home with good bones. Take a narrated video tour at www.LakewoodDuplex.info. Open house this Saturday, March 25th, 11am to 2pm

Jim Smith

Broker/Owner, 303-525-1851

Jim@GoldenRealEstate.com

1214 Washington Ave., Golden 80401

Broker Associates:

JIM SWANSON, 303-929-2727

CHUCK BROWN, 303-885-7855

DAVID DLUGASCH, 303-908-4835

TY SCRABLE, 720-281-6783

GREG KRAFT, 720-353-1922

AUSTIN POTTORFF, 970-281-9071