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MOAB — A prison parolee wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of a Denver man in a restaurant parking lot over the weekend was arrested Tuesday morning.
Police responded to a home on a stolen vehicle call about 8 a.m. They spotted the vehicle abandoned in the area and saw a man running. Officers gave chase on foot and overtook him as he tried to enter the back door of another home, said Moab Police Chief Mike Navarre.
Andrew Todd Curtis, 34, of Moab, was taken to Allen Memorial Hospital to be checked out and then transported to the Grand County Jail. He was booked on suspicion murder, aggravated assault and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person.
Curtis is suspected of stabbing 32-year-old William Paul Tague to death in an altercation outside Denny's, 989 N. Main, early Sunday morning.
A woman called police on her cell phone from outside Denny's about 2:30 a.m., saying a man had held a knife to her neck, according to a probable cause statement filed in 7th District Court. While she was on the phone, the woman told police dispatchers the man was attacking another man in the parking lot.
Police and paramedics found Tague with multiple stab wounds and transported him to Allen Memorial Hosptial. He was pronounced dead just before 5 a.m., Navarre said.
Another witness told police a man fled southbound on Main Street in a red Ford pickup.
A friend of Curtis called his former girlfriend and told her he was with Curtis and that Curtis said he stabbed someone, Moab detective Craig Shumway wrote in the court document.
The pickup was later found at the Spanish Trail Shell service station. According to Shumway, another woman admitted she was with Curtis at the time of the altercation, left Denny's with him and dropped the truck off at the gas station shortly thereafter.
Curtis was recently paroled from the Utah State Prison where he had served eight years for a shooting in the parking lot of the Rio bar in Moab.
E-mail:romboy@desnews.com
