I lived in this area for a long time so I was surprised to see this happen in a town of about 800 people.
Paula Vargas FOX31 Denver
11:48 p.m. MDT, September 22, 2011
LOG LANE VILLAGE, Colo. – Fort Morgan Police have arrested the town marshal of Log Lane Village, 33-year-old Edwin Irizarry, for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman, FOX31 News has learned.
The town marshal is the equivalent of a police chief in the rural community.
The alleged victim says a co-worker mentioned Irizarry during a dinner conversation on Sept. 14, prompting the co-worker to exchange several text messages with Irizarry while the two women were at a Fort Morgan restaurant.
According to the alleged victim, Irizarry continued sending messages to her co-worker the next day, asking if she (the alleged victim) was “hot” and whether she would be ”interested in a (sexual) threesome with him and another.”
The co-worker, whose name has not been released, told police that Irizarry sent nude pictures of himself to her cell phone along with the text message “Ask if she (the alleged victim) can handle this.”
According to the affidavit, the woman refused to look at the nude photos of Irizarry that her co-worker attempted to show her.
Later the same day, the woman told her friend that she “wanted to get wasted” after having a bad day. She says she accepted an invitation to Irizarry’s Fort Morgan home, and sent him a text message stating “Just no threesomes. Drunk or not. Haha.”
The woman told police she remembered Irizarry giving her two alcoholic drinks shortly after she arrived at his home, but she didn’t know how much alcohol was in each drink because they were mixed with Coke.
By 10:30 p.m., the woman’s co-worker says she (the alleged victim) was too drunk to walk and had to be physically carried to a bedroom.
According to the affidavit, the woman vomited on herself and on the bedding shortly after she laid down on the bed. Irizarry claims the woman was unable to stand, so he lifted her while her co-worker “removed the bedding.” He says they left her on the bed in her bra and underwear.
While the alleged victim’s co-worker took the bedding home to be washed and to retrieve clean clothes for her, Irizarry is accused of getting into the bed with the woman and fondling her underneath her underwear.
“I did not say ‘no’ and did not physically push Izzy away,” the woman told investigators, but she did say that she was “very drunk and did not feel well.”
The co-worker admits that Irizarry joined her and the alleged victim in bed and says he began sexually touching both women.
She told police that her friend was “very out of it,” and says she told Irizarry that she hadn’t seen anyone “that drunk since high school.”
The alleged victim told police that she called her primary physician the next day and went to the Sexual Assault Response Advocates for a rape exam. She says she decided to file a report with police “even though she was very afraid that she was assaulted by a police officer,” who she knew to be the chief of police of Log Lane Village.
She says she received a text message from an unknown number while she was being examined, asking “Did you make it okay? How is work sexy?” She says she finally called the number after receiving several text messages discussing the events from the previous night.
During the recorded phone conversation, Irizarry admitted to having sex and knowing that one of the women was drunk and vomited “from excessive alcohol.”
According to the police report, Irizarry began to downplay her condition, saying he “didn’t think she was that drunk.”
The Log Lane Police Department didn’t immediately return calls about the alleged incident, and referred FOX31 Denver to the department’s attorney.