The Durango Police Department arrested a Bloomfield man around 2 a.m. Saturday after the man, sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, allegedly pointed a pistol out the window at people standing outside El Rancho Tavern in Durango.
The man, Ricky Kempf, 31, was arrested on suspicion of criminal attempt of first-degree murder, a Class 2 felony; being in possession of a firearm while intoxicated, or prohibited use of a weapon; and driving while under the influence. Kempf remained in custody Wednesday at the La Plata County Jail.
“It actually started a little before the incident at 2 a.m. when officers were downtown and they heard a loud pop, like a firework or a shot,” said Durango Police Department Cmdr. Jacob Dunlop.
An officer responded to the approximate location of the noise on Narrow Gauge Avenue, where the officer contacted people near a vehicle who said they hadn’t seen anything, Dunlop said, reading from the officer’s report.
About 20 to 30 minutes later, the officer noticed the same vehicle stopped and blocking a lane of traffic on 10th Street outside El Rancho Tavern.
A Durango woman walked to the vehicle, had an argument with the driver and walked away. The officer reportedly saw the barrel of a pistol pointing out the driver’s window. It appeared to the officer that Kempf was pointing the gun at a group of three people, including the woman and her husband.
Durango police initiated a high-risk arrest, which involved pulling the occupants out of the vehicle with weapons drawn, having them kneel or lay on the ground and handcuffing them, Dunlop said.
The driver, Kempf, and two passengers were taken into custody. The passengers were not charged and later released.
Two handguns were recovered from the vehicle, and when officers returned to the location where they originally heard what sounded like a gunshot on Narrow Gauge Avenue, they recovered a shell casing, Dunlop said.
The motive for the incident was unclear, he said.
“Our investigation did not reveal that they (Kempf and the married couple) knew each other prior to that evening,” he said, aside from an earlier encounter at a bar on Eighth Street in which Kempf allegedly made a comment about the husband’s attire. The encounter did not appear to be aggressive, Dunlop said.
Earlier in the evening before the encounter at El Rancho, Kempf said he was going to “shoot up the place,” according to a passenger statement during the police investigation. The passenger did not specify which location Kempf planned to shoot up.
Kempf has a court hearing scheduled for early June.
smullane@durangoherald.com
