Guadalupe Hernandez Jr.

A vehicle that the Cody police officer spotted on Big Horn Avenue this summer was a familiar one, as were the people inside.

“I knew from previous law enforcement encounters that all three occupants had recent drug charges or convictions,” Officer Blake Stinson would later write of the Aug. 27 stop.

The incident came to a familiar end, too, with police making arrests and issuing citations.

One occupant, 39-year-old Guadalupe Hernandez Jr., was already wanted in Big Horn County for allegedly violating his probation from a prior crime; he reportedly bolted from the car. Hernandez was arrested after a chase — though not before he allegedly pulled a pistol out of his pants.

Because Hernandez has prior felony convictions that prohibit him from having a firearm, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming is taking up his case.

To clear the way for federal prosecutors, the Park County Attorney’s Office dismissed its most serious charge against Hernandez last week — a felony count of possessing a deadly weapon with unlawful intent — and reached an agreement with the Big Horn County Attorney’s Office to not revoke his probation.

“At any time for any reason we can choose to refile it,” Deputy Park County Jack Hatfield said of the firearm possession charge, “but we’re not going to, because the feds are dealing with it.”

Hatfield said a conviction in federal court would likely result in more prison time than a similar conviction in state court.

To close out the case in Park County, Hernandez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of interference with a peace officer and violating a domestic violence protection order, with Hatfield stipulating to a sentence of time served. Following Wednesday’s hearing at the courthouse in Cody, Hernandez was transferred to Casper to face his new federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

A U.S. magistrate judge is set to decide Wednesday whether Hernandez can be released while the case is pending; he has been in custody since his arrest in August.

Meanwhile, the other two people in the car, 34-year-old Robert Demoney of Powell and 31-year-old Stephanie Lee of Cody, were charged with drug offenses. Those charges came after a search of the vehicle reportedly turned up a syringe loaded with methamphetamine — which Demoney claimed as his — and various paraphernalia.

Lee faces misdemeanor charges of possessing and using a controlled substance, to which she’s pleaded not guilty. She’d been out on bond on other misdemeanor cases in Park and Sheridan counties at the time of her August arrest. She made bail on Oct. 11 and was freed.

As for Demoney, it’s alleged to be the third time that he’s possessed a controlled substance, making the charge a felony. Park County prosecutors have also filed misdemeanor charges of using a controlled substance and improper turning.

Demoney, who remained in custody on a $7,500 bond on Monday, has pleaded not guilty to all of the allegations. In addition, his court-appointed defense attorney, Lindsey Krause Crandall, is seeking to suppress all of the evidence that police gathered against her client. Crandall contends that the traffic stop — and the subsequent search of the vehicle — was illegal and violated Demoney’s constitutional rights.

She argued in a motion filed this month that officer Stinson “was without reasonable suspicion or probable cause or any other legal justification to detain and search the defendant and/or his vehicle.” A hearing on her motion is set for Jan. 2.

In affidavits filed in support of the arrests, Stinson said he turned around and began following Lee’s vehicle on Big Horn Avenue after he “recognized [it] from numerous previous law enforcement contact.” As the officer watched, he said the vehicle turned onto 17th Street after only briefly flashing its left turn signal. State law requires that you signal for 100 feet before changing lanes or turning and Stinson pulled the vehicle over around 9:15 a.m.

When the vehicle stopped, Stinson reportedly saw the driver — later identified as Demoney — and the front passenger — Hernandez — reach for the floor between the seats. Lee would later tell police that Hernandez had tried to leave his handgun in her vehicle, and that she’d told him she couldn’t have a gun in her possession because of her bond conditions.

The officer told the occupants to keep their hands in plain sight.

However, while Stinson radioed dispatch with the three travelers’ names, Hernandez reportedly took off running. With the officer in pursuit, Hernandez jumped a fence into a backyard and pulled a handgun from the waistband of his pants, Stinson wrote; he ultimately dropped the FNH FNX-45 pistol and gave himself up after Stinson pulled his own firearm, the affidavit says.

Stinson arrested Hernandez on suspicion of possessing a deadly weapon with the intent to commit another crime, because of his “behavior, association with known drug users, his flights from the traffic stop, his concealing a deadly weapon and his attempt to dispose of the evidence while fleeing.”

Court documents show that authorities in Big Horn County had been seeking Hernandez’s arrest since June. Prosecutors there said Hernandez absconded while on intensive supervised probation for endangering children; court records show he reportedly had kept meth in the same house with his kids in 2014. His probation agent wrote in a June report that, in addition to dropping out of contact, Hernandez had failed to enter inpatient treatment “to address continued use of methamphetamine while on supervision.”

Before disappearing in June, Hernandez had been living in Lovell. After his Aug. 27 arrest in Cody, he told officials that his address was “on the run” and that he had “lost everything” as a result, court records say.

Several family members wrote letters of support on Hernandez’s behalf to Park County District Court Judge Bill Simpson this month. They described him as a good, hard-working man who has repeatedly fallen prey to his drug addiction and a poor choice in friends.

“Over the years, my family and I have seen history repeat itself over and over,” one sister wrote. “It is a vicious cycle in which he continues to find himself once again.”

She and other family members from Texas asked Judge Simpson to craft a sentence that would involve extensive drug treatment instead of significant jail or prison time. However, with the federal government taking over the bulk of the case, Hernandez’s fate will now rest in a different judge’s hands.

He has yet to enter a plea to the new federal charges.