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A twist in the trial of Craig man charged with dealing drugs in Eagle County

Defense works to expel key piece of evidence in DA’s case against Curtis Shewfelt

Local defense attorney Jesse Wiens, left, speaks with client Curtis Shewfelt, middle, in the halls of the Eagle County Justice Center on Wednesday.
Kelli Duncan/kduncan@vaildaily.com

In the second day of the trial of Curtis Shewfelt, a Craig man accused of transporting drugs to an alleged Eagle County dealer, the defense worked to block the prosecution from utilizing a central element of their case: a series of text messages between Shewfelt and the dealer.

Shewfelt currently faces charges of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute, both class 3 drug felonies, in a long and bumpy case that all began July 13, 2017.

In the early morning hours of July 13, Shewfelt rode in the passenger seat of his black Chevy pickup truck as his friend, Holiday Sanchez, was tailed by police for allegedly swerving on Interstate 70 near Vail. Sanchez did not pull over, but rather sped up and tried to evade police before crashing in the Avon Road roundabout in Avon, according to police reports and testimony given Tuesday.



Police found drug paraphernalia, cellphones and three small containers of what they believed to be heroin in the car and arrested Sanchez and Shewfelt that night.

They later extracted the data from one of the cellphones found to belong to Shewfelt, which produced the series of messages that the prosecution says will prove that Shewfelt is a drug dealer who was coming to the mountains that night to deliver heroin to Samuel Fightlin.

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Fightlin, also known as “Sam Fight” or “Sammy Fight,” has multiple previous felony drug charges and is believed to have been involved in trafficking heroin and methamphetamine across the Eagle and Roaring Fork valleys, according to police reports related to the Shewfelt case.

Called to testify under subpoena, Fightlin walked into the courtroom Wednesday morning in a black shirt and jeans, easily recognizable by the large tattoo on his forearm that reads “FIGHTLIN.”

After serving time in the Trinidad Correctional Facility in Model, Fightlin said he is living in a halfway house in Garfield County, has two jobs and is “living a good, healthy life now.”

Beyond this disclosure, Fightlin was curt and, oftentimes, combative with prosecuting attorney Amy Padden of the 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, giving up as little information as possible through vague or dismissive answers.

When Padden asked him if he knew a person by the name of Curtis Shewfelt, Fightlin said he didn’t remember if he did or didn’t.

Among the other things Fightlin said he didn’t remember were his previous felony charges, the name of his attorney, whether he knew a person named Holiday Sanchez and whether he exchanged Facebook or text messages with Shewfelt during summer 2017.

He explained this lack of recollection by saying he had “dealt with so many people in (his) past” and “was under the influence of a lot of drugs” back then. He also testified that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2013 that impacted his memory.

The prosecution called Detective Sergeant Aaron Veldheer of the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, who interviewed Shewfelt after the 2017 arrest and, later, analyzed the messages pulled from his phone.

Veldheer testified that the messages between Shewfelt and Fightlin contained “drug talk,” but when lead prosecuting attorney Johnny Lombardi made a motion to have the messages formally admitted as evidence to dig into them further, Shewfelt’s defense attorney Jesse Wiens objected.

The messages had not been “properly authenticated” to be entered as evidence, Wiens said.

Judge Paul Dunkelman agreed that the prosecution had not met all of the prongs of the legal standard for the authentication of text messages as outlined by the Colorado Court of Appeals.

The prosecution failed to prove it was Fightlin who was behind the messages to Shewfelt beyond the fact that the messenger’s number was listed in Shewfelt’s phone as “Sam Fight,” a nickname used by Fightlin.

Veldheer’s testimony alongside earlier testimony from Tim Rhodes, the computer forensic examiner that extracted the data from the phone, had proven that Shewfelt was definitely involved in the messages. Rhodes said the numbers associated with the phone as well as a Facebook identification number and other accounts on the device all linked back to Shewfelt.

For this reason, Dunkelman allowed Padden and Lombardi to use the messages as evidence with regards to what Shewfelt said, but they could not use Fightlin’s messages to push back on his claims of not remembering Shewfelt or to ask him questions about the deal they were arranging that night.

Significantly “hamstrung” by this, as Padden put it, the prosecution proceeded with Heather Sczech, the forensic scientist who confirmed that the substance found in Shewfelt’s car was indeed heroin.

The total net weight of the heroin in question was 16.74 grams, Sczech said, or a little over half an ounce. In police reports related to Shewfelt’s case, the heroin was originally weighed in the containers and was reported as being 44.7 grams or just over an ounce and a half.

As the afternoon went on, Veldheer was called back to the stand to continue his testimony and the prosecution showed a video of the interview he conducted with Shewfelt on the morning of July 13 after he was brought into the Eagle County Detention Center.

In the video, Shewfelt is wrapped in a blanket and sits slumped over in a chair next to Veldheer. Most of his answers are low mumbles and he can be seen frequently placing his head in his hands or on the table in front of him.

Shewfelt was slow to divulge any kind of information about why he and Sanchez were driving from the Denver area to Gypsum at 3:30 a.m. when they were flagged by Vail police.

When asked who he was traveling to meet, he pauses for a good deal of time and answers “Carl.” Upon further prodding, he said he had known “Carl” for two years.

At this point, Veldheer told Shewfelt that, if all he was going to do was lie to him and the two other officers in the room, then “we’re going to be done.” No one takes a full 30 seconds to recall the name of someone they have known for two years, Veldheer said.

Shewfelt later said he was meeting someone named “Sam” and, when Veldheer showed him a photo of Samuel Fightlin, Shewfelt confirmed that it was the person he was referring to but said he and Sanchez were just going to hang out with him.

He said he knew nothing about the heroin found behind the driver’s seat of his truck, adding that it must have come from one of the bags that Sanchez had brought with her. He did admit to using heroin on occasion, stating that he had last used the day before.

Shewfelt said he had been sleeping on the ride to Gypsum and had only awoken when Sanchez began evading police, at which point he told her to pull over and even considered trying to grab the wheel.

In response to questions about why he was visiting a local suspected drug dealer in the early morning hours with heroin in his car, Shewfelt continued to deny knowledge of the drugs. If he ever brought heroin into the mountains, it was in small amounts for personal use, he said.

Veldheer continued to press him, saying he couldn’t put in a good word to the District Attorney’s Office if Shewfelt wasn’t honest and compliant.

“You’re not going to help me anyways,” Shewfelt said later, becoming agitated. He got up suddenly and walked out of view of the camera, at which point the prosecution ended the clip.

Shewfelt’s trial will continue Thursday morning with both sides aiming to rest their cases and hand it over to the jury for deliberation around the lunch hour, Dunkelman said.


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