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SALT LAKE CITY (AP/KSL News) -- Police have released the name the two people shot to death following a chase in Kansas and wanted for questioning in the slaying of an 80-year-old Salt Lake County man.
The chase started around 2 p.m. Wednesday 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.
The two were sought in the Jan. 14 shooting death of Steven Poulos, 80, of Holladay, Utah.
Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies identified the woman as Alicia Lyn Wingate, 26, of North Salt Lake. On Thursday, in another release issued by Drees, Ellis County Coroner Dr. Lyle Noordhoek identified the man as Aaron Millenson, 18, of Englewood, Colo.
Noordhoek also said Wingate had used the last name Cardall.
Wingate's mother tells KSL NewsRadio this morning that Wingate was raised in a religious home. She is deeply grieved to think that her daughter might be involved somehow in this crime.
Homicide detectives in Utah became aware of Wingate through a phone call she made to the Poulos home on the day he was killed, said Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Paul Jaroscak.
Investigators went over phone records, talking to several people who had called Steven Poulos, inquiring about a 1997 Subaru Legacy he had been selling through classified ads.
"We called a Colorado number the day after the murder and spoke with a woman," Jaroscak said Wednesday. "This particular one, when we talked to her, she wasn't truthful. We caught her in a lie."
Wingate told officers she called Poulos from Denver, responding to a car ad she'd seen on the Salt Lake Auto Trader website. But the Auto Trader says it never ran the ad and her calls actually came from Salt Lake.
Detectives decided to make an unannounced visit to the woman in Denver. While investigators were en route, police in Denver tried to contact the woman. Police believed she was home, but no one would answer the door, Jaroscak told the Deseret Morning News.
"We would call her on her cell phone, and she would give us information we knew to be incorrect on her whereabouts," he said. By the time Utah homicide detectives arrived in Colorado, they had already been tracking her cell phone. Jaroscak said it led them to Kansas.
"We knew in talking to acquaintances of theirs in Denver what kind of car they would be driving," Jaroscak said. "We gave a car description and a description of the people we wanted to talk to, to Kansas authorities."
Earlier, Salt Lake County prosecutors had filed a second-degree felony charge of obstruction of justice against Wingate in 3rd District Court. A probable cause statement detailed her phone call and said she tried to cover up where and why the call was made.
Millenson had a warrant for his arrest in Colorado for failure to appear at a criminal court proceeding, Drees said.
Police have not found the maroon Subaru apparently taken from the Poulos home.
However, Nick Poulos, the victim's son, told The Salt Lake Tribune, "We are still grieving, but we feel a sense of relief that these people are no longer on the streets to do this to others."
Poulos was among troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, and he narrowly escaped death June 19, 1944, when he was shot five times by a German machine-gunner. He was awarded a purple heart, a bronze star, a combat infantry badge and a blue ribbon citation.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
