This undated photo provided by University of Utah shows ChenWei Guo, a student killed in an attempted carjacking near campus
Authorities are trying to figure out how a longtime criminal recently released from an Alabama prison ended up in a Utah canyon where he’s suspected of killing a 23-year-old devout Mormon immigrant from China.
ChenWei Guo came to the United States in 2012 and dreamed of opening a consulting firm. He was studying computer science in his first year at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Friends say the 23-year-old smiled easily, loved to dance and could be found trekking canyons around Salt Lake City, like the one where his body was found Monday night.
A 24-year-old ex-convict is suspected of shooting the student to death after demanding Guo’s car, according to Utah authorities.
Police found Guo’s body still in his vehicle in a canyon just east of campus, prompting a campus-wide lockdown and a massive overnight manhunt at the school and in the rugged foothills nearby.
Austin Boutain surrendered without incident yesterday [Macau time] at a city library several miles away, about 15 hours after Guo was found.
“It just seemed like the most senseless thing to do, take the life of such a great person,” said Steve Comrie, a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation that included Guo.
Boutain has a rap sheet that includes drug, car theft and weapons charges in Minnesota and Alabama dating back to his days 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.
Alabama court records show Boutain and his wife Kathleen married in 2014 and had two children. He filed for divorce in January while imprisoned, but the split wasn’t finalized in court.
Boutain and his wife were wanted for questioning with the killing of a 63-year-old Golden, Colorado man whose truck is missing but which authorities say Boutain may have driven to Utah.
Police said Mitchell Bradford Ingle, whose body was found Tuesday in his trailer home, may have been friendly with the Boutains but it wasn’t clear how they met and how the older man was killed.
Kathleen Boutain was jailed in Utah on unrelated drug and theft charges after she reported to police that her husband had assaulted her while they were camping in the canyon.
Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown and University of Utah police did not have details about how Boutain encountered Guo and later evaded hundreds of officers who swarmed the campus after the shooting.
A lockdown at the university, which has about 32,800 students, ended yesterday and school officials canceled classes for the day. About 175 students had to shelter in the library Monday night because they couldn’t return to their homes. Lindsay Whitehurst, Salt Lake City, AP
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