Monticello fearful without word of capture
Copyright © 1998 The Durango Herald. All rights reserved.
Super 8

Herald/Nancy Richmond

CORINA GUIRE, assistant manager of Super 8 Motel, checks her emergency scanner Saturday in Monticello, Utah, for any information on the manhunt for three fugitives in Cross Canyon. Accused of killing a police officer in Cortez, the fugitives are still at large.

May 31, 1998

By Amy Maestas
Herald Staff Writer

MONTICELLO, Utah – Residents say the kids usually run this small town in Southeast Utah, but Saturday the news that authorities had not yet found three fugitives possibly armed to the teeth made the streets quiet.

Residents in the town of 1,800 said they were scared, but were most fearful about not being kept informed.

"We don’t know what’s going on," said Corina Guire, assistant manager of the Super 8 Motel.

"People are paranoid in this area," said her mother, Roseanne Guire, the motel’s owner.

Guire said residents were up early Saturday racing to buy newspapers with the latest information about the three gunmen who shot and killed a Cortez police officer Friday before fleeing on foot in ruin-filled Cross Canyon. The canyon, about 28 miles southeast of Monticello, straddles the Utah-Colorado border.

Friday’s deadly events brought to an abrupt halt camping celebrations planned by senior high school students. Friday was graduation day, and the norm for students here is to set up tents and build fires in nearby Canyonlands National Park and the Abajo Mountains.

Some said teenagers who regularly hang out in Blanding, a town 20 miles south, stayed home for fear of having encounters with the gunmen.

"People are concerned in Monticello for law enforcement," said Bill Boyle, editor of the weekly San Juan Record.

Boyle, who said he had been following the news even though his paper is published only on Wednesday, also said residents are keeping low profiles in spite of the distance between the town and canyon.

"The country looks flat until you get to it and then it just drops," he said. "There are untold side canyons, rock ledges and Anasazi ruins."

Boyle said residents are being cautious but also realize how rugged the terrain is in the nearby canyon.

"There’s an awful lot of ground between here and there," he said. "I think someone breaking out of prison in Salt Lake City would get to Monticello before these guys would."

San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacey said his department, which includes more than 100 officers, was going full bore. There are two searches with separate command centers, one in Utah and another in Colorado, keeping in constant contact.

Trent Schafer, Monticello city manager, said the three gunmen transformed the community into a carefree place where residents leave their doors unlocked and their keys in their cars to a paranoid, deserted town.

"Everybody that has a scanner has it on, including me," Schafer said. "In my opinion, these are cold-blooded killers that could get into town very easily."

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