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BEAVER — More details are surfacing about a standoff Wednesday night that shut I-15 near Beaver for about five hours and ended in the suspect taking his own life. The freeway opened just before midnight and traffic is moving again.
Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Charles Collings finally called it a day sometime after 2 a.m. He was the trooper who first spotted the car belonging to Russell Scott Goldberg, 49, just north of Parowan, about 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Police in Redondo Beach, Calif. say Goldberg shot his estranged wife multiple times, killing her at her apartment on Wednesday morning. The couple was in the middle of a divorce.
Goldberg's attempt to flee somehow led him to Utah on I- 15, creating a very tense situation for law enforcement in this rural area, especially when they learned who was behind the wheel.
There was a chase, but not above 65 miles per hour. Tire spikes were deployed and eventually Goldberg's car stopped about six miles north of Beaver. Police surrounded the car and closed the freeway, but he did not respond to orders to get out of the car.
Because of the concern that the man was armed, a SWAT team was called in and after three hours, moved in. Beaver County Sheriff Cameron Noel believes Goldberg had shot himself before his car came to a complete stop.
"It was probably somewhere right after he came to a stop there. The officers were a ways behind him," Noel said. "From the time they stopped him until the time they got in, there was no movement in the vehicle whatsoever."
The car is being held at the sheriff's office in a secured impound facility. Crime tape remains around it until investigators arrive to process the vehicle for evidence, not only from the shooting Wednesday night, but the murder in California.
Goldberg and his wife have two children, but police in California say they are safe.
Police in Utah are clearly relieved that they did not get caught in a shootout with the suspect, who was desperate to avoid arrest.
