The Denver man convicted of stealing two cars and a motorcycle last July, and leading authorities on a five-hour chase through the Roaring Fork Valley, was sentenced on Monday to six years in a correctional facility that offers intensive drug rehabilitation.
Philip Vigil, 28, originally faced 17 counts and potentially decades in prison for the crimes. In April he pleaded guilty to five counts, four of them felonies: motor vehicle theft, vehicular eluding, driving with a revoked license, possession of a weapon by a previous offender and, the lone misdemeanor, reckless endangerment.
His plea agreement with the district attorney's office recommended that he be given a community corrections sentence - rather than one in a state prison - if he was cleared for one by the probation department. They did clear him, and District Judge James Boyd heard arguments on whether the community corrections program in Garfield County or Peer One, a highly structured Denver-based facility for the drug treatment of criminals, would be more appropriate.
Judge Boyd chose the Peer One facility, after an impassioned promise from Vigil that he was ready to rehabilitate himself and a lengthy description of Vigil's hard life from his attorney.
"It's been a very difficult life for Philip Vigil, judge," said public defender Garth McCarty, standing with a hand on his client's shoulder.
He described how Vigil and his two younger brothers had been abandoned by their parents while teenagers, and how Vigil dropped out of middle school to raise them.
In Denver, he said, Vigil had seen friends and family members gunned down by police.
McCarty said that when Vigil stole the vehicles last summer, he had been awake for 29 days using methamphetamine, rendering him "barely even recognizable as a human being." Vigil came to Snowmass, McCarty said, with a female acquaintance from Denver who took his wallet and left with her car.
Not knowing where he was, and in a drug-induced panic, McCarty said, Vigil stole the first truck in Snowmass. During the chase that followed, Vigil stole a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and another truck, which he drove off of Highway 82 onto the Aspen municipal golf course, where he nearly hit a man on the bike path.
"Why someone would put himself and so many people at risk I don't understand," said deputy district attorney Tony Hershey.
At one point during the chase, the Pitkin County Sheriff's Office set up a roadblock, where deputy Brad Gibson fired an M-16 at Vigil's tires. McCarty said that "cowboy act" - and the memory of police killing his loved ones - kept Vigil from surrendering to authorities, because he assumed they would kill him. "The result," McCarty said, "in Mr. Vigil's mind was, 'I'm going to run for my life, not just my freedom.'"
"He shot at me and it went black," Vigil said during the hearing. "I wasn't thinking."
Vigil thanked the staff of the Pitkin County Jail, and credited their humane treatment for his burgeoning rehabilitation.
"This jail here has shown me so much love that it changed me," Vigil said. "It changed the person I wanted to be."
He said when he came into the jail his teeth had fallen out from abusing methamphetamine, that he had lost contact with his children and had lost the ability to comprehend reading.
"The year I've been here I got my brain back," he said, swearing to Judge Boyd that he would not use drugs or commit crimes if given his freedom.
Before issuing his sentence, Boyd said, "I accept your sincerity. For the diligence to follow up on that sincerity, the ball is in your court."
Vigil has 365 days of credit served in the Pitkin County Jail. At the Peer One facility, he will be allowed outside on a limited basis after one year of success in the program.
He will be transferred there from the Pitkin County Jail when space is available.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
