By David Grant Long

A man being pursued by police for sticking up a Shiprock convenience store Sunday afternoon was pronounced dead a few hours later after driving his disabled pickup into a field south of Cortez and firing a handgun into his right temple.

Mark R. Miller, 44, died from his self-inflicted head wound at Southwest Memorial Hospital around 8 p.m. despite the efforts of emergency-room staff, according to Montezuma County Sheriff’s Detective Lt. Kalvin Boggs. Miller was from Texas, he said, but had lived in the Cortez area for the past few months.

"We’re fortunate it didn’t turn into a shoot-out and nobody else was injured," said Boggs, adding that he had no idea why Miller might have decided to resort to such a drastic measure to avoid capture.

Navajo police picked up Miller’s trail north of Shiprock on Highway 666 and chased his 1984 red Ford Ranger pickup as far the Colorado state line, Boggs explained, where officers from the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Colorado State Patrol and the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Department took over the pursuit around 4 p.m. The high-speed chase continued through the reservation and roared past the Ute Mountain Casino while road spikes were being set up at two locations a few miles south of the M&M Truckstop.

Miller’s vehicle ran over both sets of the spikes, which are designed to puncture tires in a way that will cause them to deflate gradually, and drove for another mile or so before Towaoc police officer Richard Lefthand and Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Jerry Wiseman used their patrol cars to ram the suspect’s pickup, causing it to spin out and stall.

But Miller wasn’t through yet, Boggs recounted, even though the truck was now traveling on three flat tires.

"After the spin-out maneuver was employed, (Miller) drove from the road through a ditch and then behind a residence off Highway 160," he explained. "What ultimately got him to stop was that he ran into a flatbed trailer, which disabled the vehicle."

With police closing in, Miller then fired a bullet through his head as he sat in the pickup’s cab, Boggs said, and was transported to Southwest a few minutes later. Southbound traffic was stopped at Highway 160/666’s intersection with County Road G, during the pursuit and resumed about an hour later.

Miller had used a .38-caliber handgun to rob Arnold’s Conoco station of about $800, according to Towaoc Police Chief Dusty Whiting. He said the three Navajo officers who had continued the pursuit were urging the suspect to give himself up when the fatal shot was fired, Whiting said.

Navajo Police Lt. Philip Joe said yesterday that Miller had entered the convenience store and confronted the female clerk with the gun, but apparently made no statement before grabbing the money from the cash register and fleeing. Joe said his officers located the suspect’s vehicle just north of Shiprock, but were unable to stop it before it crossed the state line.