Silverthorne vehicular homicide trial moved to January

Summit County Sheriff’s Office
Devin Cody Feltes will have to wait a little bit longer for his day in court after his trial was postponed on Monday morning, more than a year after a rollover car crash killed a passenger in his car.
Feltes, 32, rolled over a Jeep while driving in the early morning of April 4, 2017, on Royal Buffalo Drive near Lake View Drive in Silverthorne, according to court documents. Officers from the Silverthorne Police Department and Colorado State Patrol responded to the call from an uninjured passenger, and were able to transport Feltes and another to St. Anthony Summit Medical Center in Frisco. The other passenger was pronounced dead on scene.
According to court documents, there was no evidence that the vehicle was out of control when it traveled off the roadway, and despite moderate snow with poor visibility, weather was not deemed to be the main factor for the crash. Instead, excessive speed and chemical impairment were investigated as contributing factors.
A Colorado State Patrol trooper, citing probable cause, asked for a blood draw while Feltes was still unconscious and being prepped for transport to St. Anthony’s Central in Lakewood. Feltes’ blood sample returned a blood alcohol content of .174, more than double to legal limit.
A subsequent post-crash inspection — which included an event data recorder download and crash data from the airbag control module — was completed on April 7. Event data recorders, sometimes known as “black boxes,” and airbag control modules both record data from seconds before a crash that investigators can look to for important information. According to the data collected, the vehicle was traveling 59 miles per hour in a posted 30 miles per hour zone five seconds before the crash. Data also showed that the two survivors’ seat belts were buckled at the time of the crash. The third individual was not properly restrained, resulting in his ejection from the vehicle during the crash.
It’s because of the crash data that the trial was continued. A company called Bosch Diagnostics, which recently updated its crash data software, analyzes black boxes for law enforcement agencies around the world. According to Lisa Hunt, senior deputy district attorney, a new accident reconstruction report shows at least minor changes from the original data collected. The defense requested more time to investigate the new report, and the trial was continued from this week until January.
“All of the data was run a year ago, but there were recently some software updates,” said Hunt. “It’s always best practice to run the data again if the case is still pending with updates in the software.”
Feltes is charged with two counts of vehicular homicide while driving under the influence and driving in a reckless manner. His trial is set to take place from Jan. 8-16.

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