SALT LAKE CITY – A librarian and three security guards helped bring down the man at the center of a 15-hour man hunt in Salt Lake City.
24-year-old Austin Boutain is accused of shooting and killing a University of Utah student, Chenwei Guo, in what University of Utah Police call a car jacking gone wrong.
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said U of U Police Chief Dale Brophy of Guo. On Tuesday, police confirmed that Boutain and his wife, Kathleen Boutain, are both wanted in questioning in a murder in Golden, Colorado.
As over a hundred officers from multiple agencies responded to the U of U campus Monday to search for Boutain, he somehow escaped their search zone and later ended up in Salt Lake City’s Public Library early Tuesday afternoon.
Boutain was first spotted by a librarian on the third floor. After walking past the librarian to the bathroom, the librarian made a radio call to security guards.
“I was like hey be ready for anything, be ready to go,” said Johann Gonzalez-Rubio, one of two security guards that arrived first. “He said okay, yea let’s go and that’s when we went in and were prepared for anything.”
But Gonzalez-Rubio didn’t expect what happened next.
“He looked at me and was like ‘hey man, I’m going to use the restroom real fast,” Gonzalez-Rubio said.
He also noticed there was another person in the bathroom stall, and didn’t want to put that person’s safety in jeopardy. So, he backed out and waited for backup. After another security guard showed up, they went back in.
“He’s like, ‘hey man, you got me,’” Gonzalez Rubio said of Boutain. “[He] lifts his hands up, puts them behind his back, and I cuff him.”
