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TOOELE COUNTY -- A fugitive who ran from police Friday morning in Tooele County has finally been captured. The man was on the lam for several hours before a police dog tracked him down.
The man's capture was inevitable, seeing that he ran in the middle of nowhere near the Delle exit in Tooele County. And as soon as the K-9 was on the case, the manhunt was over in a matter of minutes. The police dog found the suspect just a few hundred yards from where he ran.
It began a few hours earlier, as he man and a woman were together in a car at the gas station in Delle and employees called police to ask them to leave the property.
The trooper noticed the car had an expired registration, and he confronted them. The man, who has parole violations and warrants for theft and drugs, fled south into the desert.
Troopers and sheriff's deputies treated the man as being armed and dangerous and brought the highway patrol's helicopter to search from the air.
But in the end, it was the police dog which ended the manhunt.
Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Troy Marx said, "He went south of the store, over a little ridge, and the trooper didn't see him after that, so we didn't think he was too far away; and so we called out the helicopter and the police dog to assist on the hunt, and we set up a perimeter, and the helicopter was on scene and the dog followed his traces out, and he was hiding 300-400 yards here, south of the store under a bush."
The woman who was with the fugitive did not run but was taken into custody.
Troopers were confident the fugitive would be caught.
Marx said, "Surprising, they hide out for a while, but we usually end up catching them. There is nowhere to go. Really, if we get the manpower out here right away, there really is nowhere to go. It just takes us time to find them."
The owner of the car the couple was in, Alvino K. Flores, told KSL he loaned the car to the couple on Monday after they claimed the woman's mother had gotten in an accident and was in the hospital in Utah County.
Flores said he had only known the couple for a few weeks.
"I tried to call them, and they couldn't answer," he said. "I texted them and didn't get an answer, so I didn't know if the text had gotten to them or not."
Flores got a call from police Friday morning and came out to find many of the couple's belongings were packed inside.
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Story compiled with contributions from Sam Penrod and Marc Giauque.
