OURAY COUNTY – After a six-hour standoff last Saturday evening, Ouray County Sheriff’s deputies were able to detain a suicidal woman with a loaded handgun at her home on County Road 1, approximately three miles south of Colona.

The woman, in her late 20s, is now being held at a hospital in either Pueblo or Grand Junction, according to Ouray County Sheriff Dominic “Junior” Mattivi.

Emergency dispatch received a call from the woman’s boyfriend at about 4 p.m. on Saturday after she called to say goodbye.

“She had already killed all her pets, made goodbyes with all her family and threatened to kill anybody that came to help her,” Mattivi said in his report to the Ouray Board of County Commissioners on Monday.

Mattivi said two deputies from the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office were the first to arrive on the scene and once Ouray deputies arrived the Montrose officers stood down. With communications “scratchy at best” Ouray deputies had to station themselves above the woman’s house in order to make contact with her on a cellular phone.

“After several hours she agreed to meet with a deputy and finally agreed to give over her ammunition and then the loaded gun,” he said. “This could have gone either way. No one was hurt, except the animals.”

Mattivi told the commissioners that his department gets quite a few suicide calls a year but this incident was one of the worst in recent memory because the woman had “proven to us that she was capable of doing anything.”

The Montrose County SWAT team was put on stand-by during the incident in case the situation deteriorated further. The plan then would have been to rush the house to get the loaded gun away from the woman. Mattivi speculated that could have been the outcome the woman was seeking.

“She was wanting suicide by cop,” he said. “She was hoping we would go in there and rush her.”

The incident came less than a week after the commissioners approved a Verizon cell phone tower on Log Hill Mesa that would improve both cellular and radio communications in Ouray County. At the hearing, emergency responders expressed a need for better communication lines in Ouray County.

While it is uncertain if the approved tower, had it already been built, would have aided in communication in this particular incident, it serves as an example of the spotty communication law enforcement and emergency responders deal with in Ouray County.

“Fortunately, it worked out even though we had communication problems,” Mattivi said. “Cell phones were iffy at best. It was tough to catch every other word in a situation like that.”

Mattivi told the commissioners that Saturday’s situation showed how well the different agencies in the area including the Montrose Sheriff’s Office, Ouray County EMS and the State Parks work together.

“Everybody did a great job,” he said. “Norm [Rooker]’s (chief paramedic, Ouray County EMS) people were super. They were sitting around for four to five hours and they waited patiently at the road until we were able to get her to the road, and once she was in the ambulance they were super. In all it tied up six agencies and it really worked out well, all things considered.”