Shane McSwane pleaded guilty to two violent felonies stemming from a four-hour abduction that ended after a multijurisdictional highway pursuit.

PUEBLO, Colo. — A Colorado man was sentenced to 26 years in prison after admitting that he forced his way into a crash witness’s vehicle, kidnapped her and drove across several counties while her family followed her phone’s location and law enforcement agencies worked to stop him.

Shane McSwane, 29, pleaded guilty June 12 to second-degree kidnapping and attempted aggravated robbery, according to the Pueblo County District Attorney’s Office and the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office. A judge imposed a 13-year sentence for each count and ordered the terms to be served consecutively, meaning one will begin after the other. Prosecutors said both offenses were treated as Class 4 felonies and crimes of violence. McSwane was sentenced immediately after entering the pleas, bringing the central criminal case arising from the May 2025 abduction to a close without a trial.

The district attorney’s office said McSwane must serve 85% of the imposed sentence before he can become eligible for parole. Eligibility does not guarantee release, and any eventual parole decision would be made through the state corrections process. The requirement gives the 26-year sentence a practical weight beyond the number announced in court. McSwane’s pleas also replaced the uncertainty of a trial with formal convictions on the two charges, while allowing the court to impose separate punishment for the kidnapping and the attempted robbery rather than merging the conduct into a single prison term.

The case began May 25, 2025, after Grace Dotson witnessed a traffic crash near the Interstate 70 and Interstate 225 interchange in Aurora. Authorities said Dotson stopped and attempted to call 911. McSwane, who had been involved in the collision, then forced his way into her vehicle. What began as a motorist’s effort to report a crash quickly became a kidnapping, prosecutors said. McSwane took control of the vehicle with Dotson inside and began driving away from the Denver area, preventing her from leaving and carrying her farther from the place where she had stopped.

For roughly four hours, McSwane drove erratically and changed directions as he traveled along Interstate 25, according to the district attorney’s account. Dotson remained captive in her own vehicle. Prosecutors said McSwane at times permitted her to answer calls from relatives who had become alarmed by her absence and by the movement of her phone. The calls did not end the abduction, but they gave family members limited contact with her while the vehicle continued south. Authorities have not released a complete minute-by-minute account of the route or every exchange inside the vehicle.

Dotson was also able to communicate enough information to show that something was wrong. Earlier local reporting said she referred to a serious traffic crash during a call with emergency dispatchers and sent a brief plea for help to her mother. Her boyfriend recognized during a phone conversation that she was not safe, according to that reporting. Meanwhile, members of her family could see her phone’s location moving south from the Denver area. They later described watching that movement without knowing whether officers would reach her before the situation became worse.

The trip eventually brought the vehicle into Pueblo County. Sheriff’s deputies there were responding to a reported robbery at a convenience store in Colorado City when information about the vehicle became important. The vehicle connected to that robbery matched the description of Dotson’s car, according to the sheriff’s office. Deputies later found it traveling north on Interstate 25 toward Pueblo and attempted to make a traffic stop. McSwane did not stop, authorities said, and instead changed direction before driving south on the interstate as deputies followed.

The decision to pursue carried urgent stakes because officers believed the kidnapped woman remained inside the fleeing vehicle. Pueblo County deputies continued into Huerfano County, where deputies from that jurisdiction deployed stop sticks that deflated the tires. A Pueblo County deputy then used a Pursuit Intervention Technique, commonly called a PIT maneuver, to force the vehicle to stop. Officers took McSwane into custody and rescued Dotson. Authorities said she was brought to safety, ending an abduction that had stretched from the Denver metropolitan area into southern Colorado.

The sentencing hearing returned attention to the people who spent those hours waiting for news. Dotson and several relatives addressed the court, according to prosecutors. They described May 25 as the worst four hours of their lives and recalled watching the location marker on Dotson’s phone move along Interstate 25. Their statements placed the punishment in the context of an ordeal that affected not only the person held inside the vehicle but also relatives who could communicate with her at times without being able to remove her from danger.

Despite that experience, prosecutors said Dotson and her relatives expressed hope that McSwane would use his time in prison to change and become a better person before any eventual release. They also thanked the officers and agencies involved in ending the pursuit. Their comments did not lessen the seriousness of the crimes or the length of the punishment. Instead, they added an unusual note of compassion to a hearing focused on forced movement, loss of control and the fear created by a four-hour kidnapping.

Pueblo County District Attorney Kala Beauvais praised Dotson’s strength in addressing the court while McSwane was present. Beauvais said the office was grateful Dotson survived and credited the law enforcement agencies that coordinated the rescue. The sheriff’s office separately thanked its deputies, investigators, prosecutors and Huerfano County personnel. The case moved across several jurisdictions, beginning in Aurora and ending after officers in southern Colorado connected the carjacked vehicle to another reported offense and coordinated efforts to disable it.

Public statements released after sentencing do not provide a full account of the plea negotiations, the judge’s detailed reasoning or every charge that may have been considered earlier in the investigation. They establish, however, that McSwane accepted responsibility in court for kidnapping and attempted aggravated robbery and received the two consecutive 13-year terms. The convictions rest on guilty pleas rather than allegations awaiting trial, although official accounts remain the source for many details describing the conduct that led to his arrest.

McSwane is expected to serve the sentence in the Colorado Department of Corrections. The sentencing closes the Pueblo County prosecution announced by officials, while the impact described by Dotson and her family extends beyond the court’s final order. Their last public message combined gratitude for the rescue with the hope that the man responsible will confront what he did during the decades shaped by the sentence.

Author note: Last updated July 13, 2026.