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HAYS, Kan. (AP/KSL News) -- Two people who were killed in a shootout as they fled from officers on Interstate 70 Wednesday afternoon were wanted for questioning in the shooting death of a decorated World War II veteran in Utah on Jan. 14, authorities said.
The names of the suspects, one male and one female, were not immediately released.
The chase started around 2 p.m. after Kansas Highway Patrol troopers attempted to stop the eastbound car with Colorado registration on Interstate 70. It ended when the car collided with a concrete bridge support about two miles east of Hays, Ellis County Attorney Tom Drees said in a news release.
As officers from the Highway Patrol and the Ellis County Sheriff's Office approached the car, one of the suspects fired on them. The officers returned fire, killing both of the suspects, the release said.
Two Utah detectives traveled to Kansas on Wednesday to see if there is a link between the two people and the Jan. 14 shooting death of Steven Poulos, 80, of Holladay, Utah.
The detectives, from Salt Lake County, already were in Colorado on Wednesday trying to locate the pair, said Sgt. Paul S. Jaroscak of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office. Utah authorities became interested in interviewing the two when one of their cell phone numbers turned up during the investigation of Poulos's death.
When Utah police tried contacting numbers in Poulos' phone records, they reached a woman in Denver. Her answers didn't fit with their information.
Sgt. Paul Jaroscak, Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office: "Our detectives were uncomfortable with some of the things she said, it didn't seem to match some of the information that we knew."
So they sent two detectives to interview her. She wasn't located in Denver, but additional phone records showed she was moving east, toward Kansas, Jaroscak said.
KSL has obtained court documents that show the woman, Alicia Wingate, told officers she was responding to a car ad she'd seen on the Salt Lake Auto Trader website. She claimed she called the Poulos house from Denver. But according to the document, the Auto Trader never ran the ad. Sprint phone records show the cell phone calls were made from Salt Lake County.
When investigators learned this, they went to Denver to talk to Wingate, but couldn't find her, so they tracked her cell phone.
"Sgt. Jaroscak: "We knew they had left Denver and were headed east into Kansas."
After Salt Lake deputies alerted Kansas authorities, police there soon spotted the couple's white car and tried to pull them over. But the couple fled... leading officers on a high-speed chase until they eventually crashed into a concrete barrier. As officers approached the car, someone started shooting at them. Police returned fire, killing them both.
Poulos was found shot in the back in the basement of his Holladay home. He was among the Allied troops that stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. He narrowly escaped death on June 1944, when he was shot by a German machine-gunner.
His family and friends were offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his killer.
Nick Poulos, the victim's son released a statement saying the family feels partial relief at the news today, and they are "confident the suspects in Kansas murdered their father."
Eighty-year old Poulos was murdered about a week and a half ago, on a Saturday, in his basement. He had been selling a car. We are told it is not the same car found in Kansas.
(The Associated Press Contributed to this story)
