Eagle County giveth and Eagle County taketh away when it came to a Glenwood Springs man’s freedom Tuesday evening.
Members of West Eagle County Search and Rescue helped guide Graham Donnelly, 29, away from a precarious position in the backcountry right around dusk. Shortly after he reached safety, Donnelly was arrested by an Eagle County deputy sheriff for an unrelated criminal matter.
Donnelly was hiking with a female companion and a dog in the Seven Castles area, in the Fryingpan River Valley, when they reportedly got “cliffed out,” or stuck, because of steep terrain, according to Cleve Williams, a rescue leader with West Eagle County Search and Rescue. The hikers were unable to backtrack and weren’t equipped to spend the night in cold conditions, so they called 911 at about 4:30 p.m.
The search-and-rescue team had collected the hikers’ names while talking to the woman on the phone and passed the names on to an Eagle County deputy sheriff who was assisting in the operation. The deputy ran a routine clearance check on the parties and discovered Donnelly had two felony warrants out for his arrest, according to Shannon Cordingly, public information officer for the sheriff’s office.
Donnelly was arrested by the deputy later in the evening. The search-and-rescue team was unaware that Donnelly was going to be arrested.
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