Man held over US shooting of student from China
Print Edition
A MAN accused of killing a University of Utah student from China was arrested in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, police said.
Austin Boutain, 24, was taken into custody at a library several miles away, about 15 hours after the student’s body was found, detective Keith Horrocks said.
Boutain and his wife, Kathleen, 23, are also wanted in an investigation into a homicide in Golden, Colorado, police said.
The victim of Monday night’s incident in Utah was Chenwei Guo, 23, who was parked near Red Butte Canyon when he was shot during what may have been a carjacking attempt.
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 in Salt Lake City.
Friends say he smiled easily, loved to dance and could be found trekking canyons around the city, like the one where his body was found.
Boutain, an ex-convict, is suspected of shooting the student to death after demanding his 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.
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 18 months 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 married in 2014 and had two children. He filed for divorce in January while in prison, but the split wasn’t finalized in court.
Both are wanted for questioning in 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 Ingle, whose body was found on Tuesday in his trailer home, may have been friends with the Boutains.
Kathleen Boutain was jailed in Utah on unrelated drug and theft charges after she reported to police on Monday night that her husband had assaulted her while camping in the canyon.
A lockdown at the university, which has about 32,800 students, ended early on Tuesday.
About 175 students had to shelter in the library on Monday night because they couldn’t return to their homes.
Lori McDonald, the university’s dean of students, said Guo served as a peer adviser to help other international students find their bearings on campus and described him as “extremely outgoing, charming, creative, smart.”
In a statement, university President David Pershing said: “This senseless act of violence has shaken our community and ended the life of a dear son, true friend, and promising scholar.”
Guo served as a missionary in Provo and volunteered as a foreign language interpreter for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had recently persuaded his parents to join the church.
His friend, 24-year-old Rachel Tam, said Guo would speak in a moving and powerful way about his beliefs.
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Chinese embassy in the US immediately requested information from police, and “urged police to quickly break the case” and provide assistance to the family.
She also noted that the embassy was reminding Chinese citizens in the US to pay attention to security due to recent prominent social and security issues in some areas, and the frequency of knife and gun incidents.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
