September’s bountiful rainfall has moved Cortez out of the category of extreme drought into severe drought.
Local weather expert James Andrus says that as of the morning of Sept. 30, Cortez had received 4,96 inches of rain for the month.
He called it “an extraordinary monsoon total this cooperative observer never has seen in 31 years of weather monitoring.”
In other news, a hearing on a petition to seal records in the case of a local woman accused of killing her child has been set for Oct. 15 in District Court in Montezuma County.
Rachel Leonard, 39, was indicted last year on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of her 5-year-old daughter in 2022. She pleaded not guilty.
According to the indictment, a sheriff’s deputy responded to Leonard’s Montezuma County home on March 29, 2022, after a 911 call from another resident of the house. The deputy reportedly found the child dead on the floor and Leonard hysterical.
The indictment says a pathologist who performed the autopsy on the girl’s body with assistance from Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers could not find a cause of death. It was listed as undetermined.
Per standard procedure, the unexplained death was investigated as a homicide.
Investigators with the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Bureau of Investigation learned that Leonard was upset the night before the child’s death because when she took her to Telluride on March 26 to meet up with the girl’s father, Brian Sandoval of Montrose, for a visit, he brought his new girlfriend along
Leonard and Sandoval had broken up after a brief relationship.
In January 2023, investigators obtained a search warrant for Leonard’s iPhone – which they had seized when they went into Leonard’s home – and found that the phone’s user had done a Google search on March 27, 2022, on “how long does it takes to suffocate.” The user then went to a website that had a forum discussion about suffocating someone with a pillow, the indictment states.
On Sept. 22 of this year, District Judge Todd Plewe granted a motion to dismiss the case made by the District Attorney’s office.
In the motion, District Attorney Jeremy Reed wrote that the handling of Leonard’s cell phone by law officers didn’t meet legal requirements and was likely not to be allowed in court. Leonard’s attorneys had challenged the warrantless seizure of the phone and the fact that it was kept so long by law enforcement.
“For these reasons, an objective assessment of law enforcement’s handling of the Defendant’s cell phone does not satisfy the requirements in Mills [a case setting a precedent],” the motion says.
The motion states, “Based on the above analysis, the People are left with no other option except to dismiss this matter.
“The decision to dismiss this matter is rooted in the ethical obligations of the District Attorney.”
“This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” Reed said in a press release. “Over the past four years, the office of the District Attorney, including my administration, has put forth every effort imaginable to obtain justice for this 5-year-old victim. This is not the outcome I wanted, but ethically I cannot move forward on cases where I do not have a good faith belief we can secure a conviction.”
The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could potentially be pursued again.
Plewe’s order granting the motion to dismiss states, “A return date on sealing is set for October 15, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. at which time Brian Sandoval may address the Court. Mr. Sandoval has the right to be heard. . . Sealing is mandatory and the Court does not have discretion to deny sealing the record.”
