Juan Marquez Jr.

After roughly a year on the run, a Powell man has been brought back to Park County to face allegations that he strangled a teenager in 2022 and felony drug charges from 2021.

Prosecutors say Juan L. Marquez Jr. was arrested in Northglenn, Colorado, in May. The 41-year-old was transported back to Wyoming and booked into the Park County Detention Center on Aug. 1.

Authorities had been seeking Marquez’s arrest since May 2022 on felony charges of strangulation of a household member and child abuse. Another warrant followed in July 2022 after Marquez failed to show up for a pretrial conference on two felony counts of possessing a controlled substance (meth and marijuana) for a third time.

At an early August hearing in Park County Circuit Court, Deputy Park County Attorney Jack Hatfield called Marquez an “extreme flight risk” and a “serious public safety hazard.”

The prosecutor said Marquez “has an extensive criminal history and an extensive history of failure to appear, and failure to comply with court orders.”

Marquez acknowledged that “I don’t have a very good history,” but said he was getting help at the time of his arrest.

“I went down to Colorado to try to better myself and get some treatment,” Marquez explained. “I’m not pleading guilty, I’m just saying that I need help; I’m a drug addict.”

He asked to be released on a surety bond and GPS ankle monitor, but Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah instead adopted Hatfield’s request for a $50,000 cash bond in the child abuse case. District Court Judge Bill Simpson later added another $50,000 in the pending drug case. Jail records show Marquez has other unrelated misdemeanor cases pending, indicating he must come up with more than $100,000 to be released.

Hatfield argued that, in both of the felony cases, Marquez “is in a very likely position to be spending a lot of prison time.”

The drug charges stem from a September 2021 traffic stop on U.S. Highway 14A on Powell’s west end. Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Bill Daugherty pulled Marquez over for invalid license plates, but then smelled marijuana and realized Marquez had active warrants, charging documents say. Marquez initially denied there was any marijuana in the truck, but later offered that “there might be a roach or something.”

A glass pipe and two baggies containing roughly 1.3 grams of apparent meth and a suspected marijuana roach were found in Marquez’s pockets, though he said the items belonged to someone else. Inside the truck, troopers found a digital scale with a white powdery substance that appeared to be meth and another pipe. The quantities were small, but prosecutors chose to file felony charges because Marquez had two prior convictions for possession of a controlled substance.

Marquez pleaded not guilty and a trial was scheduled in Park County District Court. However, he ran into more trouble in 2022, when he allegedly strangled the teen. It was not the first time he'd been accused of mistreating the child, either.

In mid 2020, Marquez reportedly became angry and repeatedly punched and bruised her arm and smashed her face into the side of a car, charging documents say. According to a recounting from the Park County Sheriff's Office, the child quoted Marquez as saying, “If you don’t stop crying, I will tie you up with this rope and throw you in the water.”

Park County prosecutors initially filed a felony count of child abuse, but as part of a plea deal, it was reduced to a misdemeanor count of child endangering. In January 2021, Simpson sentenced Marquez to 70 days in jail plus one year of unsupervised probation that included no contact with the child.

However, roughly five months after that probation ended, in May 2022, the teen reported that he'd beaten her.

The child told the Park County Sheriff’s Office that Marquez angrily pulled her hair, punched her in the face, shoulders and back and smacked her head off the wall. 

The girl said she tried to get away, but Marquez “grabbed her with both hands around her throat and started choking her against the wall,” Deputy Tyler Patterson wrote in an affidavit. At one point, the girl said she began to see “static,” Patterson wrote, because she couldn’t breathe.

She also said Marquez told her that, “if she told anyone what happened he would go to jail and when gets out of jail he will find her and kill her,” recounted Patterson. He later noted redness, swelling and bruising consistent with the teen's account.

Officers attempted to locate Marquez, but he remained at large until police found him this past spring in Colorado.

During this month’s argument over bond in circuit court, Hatfield asserted that the defendant had "every reason to flee again" and  “the only thing that works with Mr. Marquez is keeping him in jail.”

Marquez disputed that, saying he previously complied with court conditions while free on a GPS bracelet. At the time of his arrest, he said he was a full-time student and receiving treatment, including psychiatric medication, which he wants to continue.

“I got a lot of stuff going on here, but I’m here, I’m home, I’m glad to be home,” Marquez said. “I want to get through this and hopefully get the help I need.”

He added later that, “I know Mr. Hatfield has it out for me, and I don’t blame him.”

However, Darrah said he saw Hatfield as just trying to represent the state’s concerns; Hatfield “can oftentimes be very fair, when it’s warranted,” the judge said. 

On Wednesday, Darrah found there was enough evidence for the child abuse case to advance to district court, where Marquez will next enter a plea. He continues to await a trial in the drug case.