A woman convicted of threatening her arresting officer with his own gun and barricading herself in the vehicle bay at the Larimer County Jail last year has been sentenced to prison.
Patricia Rodriguez, now 39, was sentenced to a total of 19 years in prison July 29 after a jury found her guilty of four felonies: second-degree kidnapping, a Class 5 felony; criminal mischief, a Class 5 felony; possession of a weapon by a previous offender, a Class 5 felony; and motor vehicle theft, a Class 6 felony. Judge Juan Villaseñor agreed with the prosecution’s request to have the sentences for each count run consecutively.
Rodriguez was also convicted of three misdemeanor charges and sentenced to jail, and those sentences were completed by applying credit given for time served.
On Feb. 19, 2023, after arresting Rodriguez on suspicion of shoplifting and bringing her to the Larimer County Jail, the arresting Fort Collins Police Services officer secured his duty weapon per the jail’s policy. But when the officer went to remove Rodriguez from his car, “he found that she had slipped out of her handcuffs, manipulated the storage safety measures and accessed his firearm,” according to a news release at the time of her arrest.