LA JUNTA — When officers detained a drunken Donovan Duran outside his father’s home in December, the 24-year-old walked to a police car with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Witnesses say the aspiring mixed martial arts fighter was mouthing off to officers but otherwise cooperative. One man even heard Duran say, “Take me to jail.”

Instead, police ushered Duran into the Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center in a wheelchair. There they told a nurse he was intoxicated and hallucinating.

About 12 hours after he was detained, Duran was in a helicopter bound for a hospital in Aurora, paralyzed from the chest down and with a broken, displaced neck. His swollen face was covered in scrapes.

Nearly two months later, it remains unclear how Duran was hurt. He says officers beat him, but he admits some of the details are a blur. Police won’t discuss the encounter, which authorities have called a “use-of-force incident.”

The La Junta Police Department has not even said why Duran, a father of two infants, was taken into custody Dec. 7. He faces no charges.

But medical and court records and interviews with Duran, his family and witnesses provide a look into the days and hours leading up to the paralysis. Duran’s lawyers characterize the case as clear-cut brutality.

“They ruined my whole life,” Duran said from his University of Colorado Hospital bed in Aurora, his limp legs curled beneath him. “They said it’s going to be a long time before I go home. They’re talking months.”

“Praying out loud”

Duran said he was injured when two La Junta officers slammed his body into the parking lot pavement outside the Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center and then kneeled on his neck . He said he remained handcuffed during the ordeal.

Once inside the hospital, he was restrained to a bed on the recommendation of one of the officers, medical records provided by Duran’s lawyer show. Duran said he writhed in pain and panicked from a lack of feeling in his lower body for hours as he sought help from security and medical staff.

“I was even praying out loud to God,” Duran said, explaining that no one heeded his pleas.

Duran said that when medical personnel finally came to check on him, they didn’t believe his legs were immobile or that he had excruciating pain in his neck.

“He picked me up real fast,” Duran said of a hospital staffer. “He got me all the way up to my feet, and I remember him being behind me. He had me by my waist and he just let go. I was dead weight. It was a hard fall. I remember my legs being two separate directions — like noodles dropping. I was like a sack of potatoes.”

A nurse wrote in an assessment obtained by Duran’s lawyers that the officers who brought Duran into the hospital — Sgt. Vince Fraker and Officer John McMillian — left him restrained to a bed without explanation when they left the facility.

La Junta’s police chief did not return several messages seeking comment. Authorities who spoke with The Denver Post said they could not talk about the case before prosecutors determine whether to file charges against the officers involved.

“It’s unfair to judge until you have both sides of the story,” said La Junta’s public safety director, Bill Jackson. “Just wait until you see the investigation and you’ll get the other side of the story — you’ll get the whole story.”

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation completed its probe of the case Jan. 19 and submitted a report to the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Arapahoe County, which is reviewing the case as a special prosecutor.

There is no timeline for when their decision will be made, and Fraker and McMillian have been restricted to administrative work pending prosecutors’ findings.

Repeated contact

Duran’s encounter with La Junta police Dec. 7, a Monday, was at least his third since that Friday. His family said he had been taken to the hospital twice by officers — once from the nearby town of Rocky Ford — in the three days before he was paralyzed.

His parents say they had repeatedly called authorities because he was downing vodka and acting paranoid. He was released the other two times, they say, after police said there was no charge on which to hold him.

“My son was going through an ordeal with his kids,” said Duran’s father, Eddie. “They were taken by social services (after he had) been fighting to get his son and daughter back. He got shot down in court on a Friday and he started to drink. He was having a nervous breakdown.”

But even before then, officers in the Arkansas River valley were familiar with Duran. State records show he was arrested 12 times starting two months after he turned 18 in 2009 and convicted of assault, violating a protection order and disorderly conduct.

Six of those arrests were by La Junta officers, including at least one in which Fraker was involved, court records analyzed by The Post found.

“I think they just got so frustrated with dealing with my son over the span of the weekend that one of them just went off and speared him from behind,” Eddie Duran said.

Donovan Duran’s lawyers said in a letter to La Junta’s city leaders putting them on notice of a lawsuit that they believe at least one of the officers involved had a tendency to use excessive force. The letter did not indicate which one.

La Junta denied an open-records request seeking internal-affairs files for Fraker and McMillian.

Officials say all of the city’s 14 sworn officers wear body cameras but declined to say whether video evidence is part of the investigation into Duran’s paralysis. The Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center, which declined to talk to The Post, would not show a reporter video surveillance from the day Duran was injured.

“Typically, when these kinds of things happen, I think a responsible police chief or police department has a duty to be transparent — at least superficially — about what transpired,” said Dan Montgomery, Westminster’s former police chief. “There’s some degree of transparency that has to occur. That’s the professional way of taking care of business.”

Montgomery, who now runs Professional Police and Public Safety Consulting, called what happened to Duran a “strange case,” particularly because of his injuries. He said he has never seen someone be paralyzed after an arrest.

“In the 47 years I was a cop, I don’t recall it happening,” Montgomery said.

For La Junta, a rural community of about 7,000 that sits roughly 65 miles east of Pueblo, Duran’s case has prompted deep speculation in the small-town rumor mill.

Link to another case

In the weeks after he was paralyzed, some friends and family gathered in protest and to demand answers. Further complicating the situation is how what happened to Duran is tied to another high-profile use-of-force case in the county.

Duran was friends with Jack Jacquez, who in October 2014 was fatally shot by an on-duty Rocky Ford police officer, who awaits trial on suspicion of second-degree murder.

Fraker has deep ties to the investigation into the now-former officer, James Ashby.

Fraker was the officer who arrested Ashby, and Rocky Ford’s police chief says Fraker was involved with the murder investigation.

On Jan. 6, about a month after Duran was paralyzed, Ashby’s trial, which had been set to begin the next week was postponed. Authorities have declined to say why.

As they wait for answers, Duran’s family says officials have told them little to nothing about the case.

His mother, Teresa Sandoval, says she has gotten more information from news reports than from authorities.

“Even the day of the accident, they kept it under the rug,” she said. “I’m very hurt.”

Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or @JesseAPaul

Timeline of incident

12 to 2 p.m. Dec. 7: Donovan Duran is arrested by La Junta police officers

12:24 a.m. Dec. 8: Duran’s father, Eddie, gets a call from Arkansas Valley Medical Center but ignores it

4 a.m.: Eddie Duran’s daughter wakes him, saying Donovan’s neck is broken and he was flown by Flight for Life to University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora