SALT LAKE CITY — A gunman with Minnesota ties who killed a University of Utah student during a carjacking attempt also shot at a friend of the victim who witnessed the slaying that sparked a massiv…
SALT LAKE CITY — A gunman with Minnesota ties who killed a University of Utah student during a carjacking attempt also shot at a friend of the victim who witnessed the slaying that sparked a massive manhunt before the man was spotted by an alert librarian and arrested, police said Wednesday.
Suspect Austin Boutain, 24, who has also been linked to a killing in Colorado, told police he shot Chinese computer-science student ChenWei Guo and then fired two rounds at the woman as she ran away so there would be no witnesses, according to newly released jail booking documents.
The woman, a fellow student, wasn’t hurt but was so traumatized by the shooting that she has struggled to tell police what happened, said University of Utah Police Chief Dale Brophy. Her name has not been released.
Boutain was booked Tuesday into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of aggravated murder, robbery and other charges as police traced the cross-country movements of the longtime criminal who was recently paroled from an Alabama prison. No attorney has been listed for him.
The booking records say Boutain told police he recently stole three guns from a home in Colorado. He said he hid a.44-caliber Ruger handgun used to shoot Guo in a crevice of a brick wall near the Salt Lake City homeless shelter, but when he returned it was gone.
He traded a second gun, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, for an ounce of marijuana, the jail documents state. The third, a rifle, was found by police at a makeshift camp were he’d been living near the university.
Police would not immediately say whether the weapons were taken from the home of Mitchell Ingle, a 63-year-old Golden, Colo., man who was found dead Tuesday in his trailer.
Boutain and his wife were wanted for questioning in his death. Police have said they took Ingle’s pickup truck.
Boutain has a rap sheet that includes drug, car theft and weapons charges in Minnesota and Alabama dating back to his days as a juvenile.
He was paroled in May after serving a year and a half in an Alabama prison for being a convicted sex offender and failing to report his whereabouts to police.
His parole was transferred this spring to Wisconsin, where he has family, but he skipped and a warrant for his arrest was issued Aug. 31, about a week after he last checked in with his parole agent, according to authorities.
Austin Boutain also has a brother who lives in Alexandria and other family in Minnesota.
Boutain’s brother, Lee, told the New York Daily News that he hadn’t heard from his brother for several months, since Boutain skipped parole in Wisconsin.
Austin Boutain is the brother of Hunter Boutain, who was thought to have contracted a brain-eating amoeba organism while swimming in Lake Minnewaska. He died at age 14 on July 9,2015. It was later determined that Hunter actually died as a result of bacterial meningitis.
Austin Boutain was arrested Tuesday after a Salt Lake City librarian spotted him at a library several miles from Red Butte Canyon, a rugged area near campus where Guo was found with his car.
Police say Guo, a devout Mormon from Beijing, was in the area popular with hikers with his friend when they encountered Boutain, who’d been staying in the makeshift camp with his wife in the canyon.
Kathleen Boutain went to campus Monday to report an assault by her husband. She was taken into custody on unrelated drug and theft charges.
