Charges dropped against woman accused of transporting 50 pounds of cocaine laced with fentanyl in Summit County
District Attorney Heidi McCollum said that her office is required under Colorado law to state that it has no records related to the case
Summit County Sheriff’s Office/Courtesy photo
The 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, citing Colorado law, is declining to provide information about why charges brought earlier this year against a woman accused of transporting more than 50 pounds of cocaine laced with fentanyl have been dropped.
Summit County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Alexis Romero, 24, of Commerce City, in March days after a dog with the Sheriff’s K9 Narcotic Interdiction and Detection Team reportedly detected drugs in the vehicle she was driving.
It was the first major bust for the K9 team since the Sheriff’s Office reestablished the program last year. The District Attorney’s Office originally charged Romero with importation of a controlled substance, a Class 1 drug felony; possessing a Schedule 1 or 2 controlled substance in excess of 225 grams, a Class 1 drug felony; and possessing a controlled substance in excess of four grams, a Class 4 drug felony.
Just a month before the charges against Romero were dropped, a judge denied Romero’s request that her bond be reduced from $100,000 to $50,000. At the time, Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Cava said that Colorado State Patrol’s task force with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration indicated Romero was a flight risk because she allegedly had connections to individuals who could help her flee.
Cava also argued at that court hearing that because Romero was allegedly transporting more than 50 pounds of cocaine, she posed a community safety risk. Romero spent almost two months in the Summit County jail while awaiting a resolution to her case.
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District Attorney Heidi McCollum did not answer an emailed list of questions related to the case being dropped but instead wrote, “The Colorado revised statutes require me to state that this office does not have any records that exist regarding this individual.”
In a subsequent phone interview, McCollum cited Article 72, Title 24, Section 700, which is the Colorado code related to public records and the sealing of criminal justice records. She said Section 703’s subsections 2a and 2b prevent her from disclosing information about the case.
Subsection 2b states, “upon the entry of an order to seal the criminal records, the defendant and all criminal justice agencies may properly reply, upon an inquiry into the matter, that public criminal records do not exist with respect to the petitioner or defendant.”
The Sheriff’s Office said in a news release at the time that it seized drugs on March 8 during a traffic stop that it initiated based on intelligence from state and federal law enforcement agencies monitoring the movement of narcotics across Colorado.
During the traffic stop, the team’s drug-sniffing dog, Baby Blue, and her handler successfully detected drugs in the vehicle, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The driver of the vehicle was booked on an outstanding misdemeanor warrant and released prior to a search warrant being executed on the vehicle, the release stated.
Later, when executing a search warrant, law enforcement reportedly discovered 25 kilograms of cocaine. The Sheriff’s Office estimated the drugs to have a street value of $800,000.
Deputies arrested Romero on March 10, two days after the traffic stop, according to a subsequent news release from the Sheriff’s Office.
“This type of investigation can be extremely time and resource intensive,” Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons said in that subsequent news release. “The goal of this (drug interdiction) team is to keep our community safe through combating drug trafficking. To accomplish that goal, it is imperative that we investigate and process these cases in accordance with the law to ensure a successful prosecution.”
Asked about the case being dropped, FitzSimons said that once charges have been filed in court, cases are in the hands of the District Attorney’s Office, not law enforcement. Therefore, he said he cannot provide any information as to why the charges were dropped.
The Summit County courts also responded to records requests filed by Summit Daily by stating that the court has no records regarding the case.
This story is from SummitDaily.com.
