Littering complaint escalates into 3 collisions, 18 charges for Colorado parolee

What started out as a complaint about a woman throwing trash out of her car window at a nature park Wednesday morning turned into a fiasco with the driver arrested on an array of new charges. 

Three vehicles were rammed by the driver as she tried to escape, including two patrol cruisers belonging to the Mesa County Sheriff's Office. 

After hitting other vehicles, the woman tried to drive through a fence surrounding the parking lot at the Clifton Nature Park. She failed, and the Mesa deputies were able to pin her car between theirs.

The 32-year-old Grand Junction woman then refused to get out of her car. Eventually, she gave up, according to a sheriff's office.

Nicole Carpenter was booked in the county jail on 18 charges ranging from petty offenses to felonies. Those included traffic infractions, drug possession, weapon possession, forgery, trespassing, resisting arrest, and littering.

Carpenter was on parole with the Colorado Department of Corrections. She was sentenced in June 2021 to three years in prison following a guilty plea to felony auto theft. It was her fifth DOC sentence since 2018.