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Law enforcement officers on Saturday afternoon arrested four men suspected of involvement in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl northwest of Cedar City late Friday night.
The first three arrests were carried out shortly before 2 p.m. by Iron County Metro SWAT agents executing a search warrant at a townhome located just west of Lund Highway, at approximately 1650 North and 3200 West.
A fourth suspect was arrested at his workplace later in the afternoon and taken into custody, Iron County Sheriff Ken Carpenter confirmed.
Carpenter said he and other investigators are “very confident” they have caught those responsible for the shooting on Midvalley Road the night before, which left the 17-year-old driver of a red pickup truck dead.
“We still need to interview them and still connect a lot of the dots,” Carpenter told reporters across the street from the townhome complex, moments after the first three suspects had been taken into custody.
“We still need to process the apartment and the vehicle, conduct our interviews, but we feel pretty good we have our suspects,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter also provided a succinct recap of the situation to reporters gathered across the street from the townhomes near Lund Highway.
“Last night at about 10:42 p.m., we received a 911 call,” Carpenter recounted. “Two females stated that they had been attacked. Their vehicle had been shot multiple times. The driver of the vehicle was critically injured. She later was pronounced dead at Cedar City Hospital. So this is a homicide investigation.”
Carpenter said it appeared that the suspect’s vehicle had been chasing a red pickup truck occupied by the girls, with the other driver flashing the high beams of his headlights repeatedly.
As previously reported, investigators believe the pursuit first went north on Lund Highway until reaching Midvalley Road, at which point both vehicles turned left and headed west until reaching the intersection of 4300 West, near Three Peaks Recreation Area.
“As they were trying to turn off the road, the vehicle came up alongside them and shot several rounds into the driver’s side of the vehicle, ultimately killing the driver,” Carpenter said.
Less than an hour before that interview, Carpenter had also spoken on camera to Cedar City News on Midvalley Road near the scene of the shooting and expressed confidence that the crime would be solved.
“I’m confident that we will find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice,” he said.
“We’ve called our search and rescue out here to do a more thorough search of the crime scene area and the immediate area outside of the crime scene, to see if we can find any additional physical evidence over what we found last night,” Carpenter added, “We’re still processing this scene out here, collecting whatever evidence we can, and our detectives are hard at work following up on leads. There’s a lot of leads that they’re following up on right now.”
Among the potential items of evidence found was at least one .223 caliber shell casing, the sheriff said.
Carpenter also noted that investigators are planning on waiting before formally interviewing the girl who was riding in the passenger side of the red pickup.
“She had an injury on her leg but we’re not sure where it came from,” Carpenter said. “We want to give her a couple of sleep cycles and be able to come down from that (trauma) so we can get a really good statement from her.”
As of 7 p.m, the four suspects’ names had not yet appeared on the Iron County Jail bookings website.
Later Saturday evening, Iron County Jail posted booking information which indicates that two of the men arrested – Ethan Galloway and Michael Hess-Witucki – are being held on suspicion of second-degree felony murder, along with 12 counts of felony discharge of a firearm and one count each of marijuana possession and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person.
The other two men, identified as Matthew Sorber-Petrie and Aldric Felipe, were each booked on suspicion of obstructing justice, along with marijuana and weapon possession charges.
As of 7:30 a.m. Sunday, formal charging affidavits for any of the arrestees had not yet been filed in 5th District Court.
As for the identity of the 17-year-old girl who died, Iron County Sheriff’s Lt. David Mitchell said the department would not be releasing her name because she is a juvenile.
However, multiple posts on social media and crowdfunding sites have identified her as KayLee Dutton.
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This report is based on preliminary information provided by law enforcement and may not contain the full scope of findings.
Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
