Escaped killers nabbed
By Elizabeth Neff
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/29/2007 11:52:34 PM MDT
A week-long manhunt for two escaped murderers ended Saturday night after the men stole a car near Rock Springs, Wyo., and led police on a chase that ended in gunfire.
Danny Martin Gallegos, 49, was in a Wyoming hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo, 29, was booked in Sweetwater County jail. Both men had guns when officers confronted them on the side of Interstate 80 between Rock Springs and Green River, at mile marker 102, said Dick Blust, a detective with the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office in Wyoming.
The duo broke into a home shortly after 7:30 p.m. in McKinnon, Wyo. near the state line and not far from the Daggett County jail where they escaped last Sunday, Blust said. They tied one man - a former Salt Lake City police officer, according to the Department of Corrections - in the house up with ropes and duct tape, threatened him with a knife, and stole his car keys, said Chief Deputy Jim Thompson of the U.S. Marshals Service in Utah.
"They asked him what's the best way to get out of here," said corrections spokesman Jack Ford.
Ford said it appeared the escapees obtained weapons - including a rifle - from the man's vehicle.
The resident freed himself and flagged down a passer-by to call police, Thompson said. A Sweetwater County sheriff's deputy spotted the car and a chase ensued, Blust said. Officers used spikes strips to blow out tires.
Thompson said the publicity on the case may have led the duo to desperation.
"It looks like they were hunkered down somewhere in the area, just like we kind of thought," Thompson said. "We don't know if they ran out of food or money, or left because they thought police were getting close."
