It took four Wyoming police personnel to hold down a Colorado man for a blood draw, moments before the man said he takes Oxycodone for back pain.
Police arrested Michael V. Garza, 49, of Greeley, on Sunday after Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Mark Kittelson discovered Garza asleep at the wheel on a Laramie County Highway.
Kittelson was responding to a report of a wrong-way driver headed south on U.S. Highway 85 in the early morning hours Sunday, according to Garza’s arrest report. The trooper instead found a dark-colored Hyundai sedan stopped in the lane of travel at a “road closed” gate with its brakes engaged.
The male driver was asleep at the wheel, the report says, with the vehicle in drive, his foot on the brake and an open, half-full beer container in the center console.
Kittelson knocked and pounded on the window repeatedly to wake the driver, later identified as Garza, the report says.
‘Hit The Brake’
Once Garva woke he lifted his foot from the brake pedal and the car started rolling toward the “road closed” gate.
“I shouted and yelled for (him) to hit the brake,” says Kittelson’s report.
Once stopped, Garza had a hard time trying to open his door or roll down the window. He had slurred speech, watery eyes and smelled of alcohol, Kittelson wrote. Garza said he’d drunk a couple beers an hour earlier.
Garza didn’t do well on his field sobriety tests, eventually saying he couldn’t finish them, the report says.
Bloodied During Blood Draw
Kittelson wrote that he tried getting Garza to consent to have his blood drawn, but Garza refused.
Cheyenne Circuit Court Judge Sean C. Chambers issued a warrant for Garza’s blood.
It would take a lot of people to hold Garza down, the man told police multiple times, adding that “no one would be taking his blood,” according to the report.
He banged his head multiple times against the trooper’s car cage during the drive to the Laramie County Detention Center, the report says.
At the jail, police forced him into a chair.
“Garza fought back and pushed myself and three other deputies backwards while forcing himself to his feet,” says the report. Police forced Garza to the ground and onto his stomach, where he got a cut on his right cheek.
Medical personnel drew Garza’s blood then, the report says.
Someone — the report does not say whether it was ambulance or law enforcement personnel — took Garza to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center to be cleared medically for entry into the jail.
Hospital workers washed the cut on his face and glued the wound shut.
Garza told hospital workers he is prescribed and used oxycodone for back pain, says the report. The hospital cleared him to enter the jail, which he did without further incidents.
Clair McFarland can be reached at: Clair@CowboyStateDaily.com
