CEDAR CITY, Utah — There's a memorial at the site where Iron County deputies say KayLee Dutton's pickup crashed through a fence after she was shot 12 times by men who claimed they were being pursued by the 17-year-old and her friend.
FOX 13 News sat with KayLee’s parents, Kimberlee and Waylon Dutton, to listen to the memories of their 17-year-old daughter, who they said could do anything.
“I looked up to her a lot because she was so driven,” said Kimberlee. “Everything she put her mind to, she went for it. She accomplished it. She did it. Every sport she picked up, she didn't even know if she was going to be good at it. She said, ‘I don't even know. Should I?’ Yeah. Try it.”
The makeshift memorial at the crash site consists of a bouquet of flowers wilting in the chilling 11-degree wind chill.
There’s also a toy motorcycle with the words “Fly high KayLee” written on the box.
Kimberlee said riding a dirt bike was something KayLee had done since she was three, taking after her mom.
“And then I found out I was pregnant. And then later I told her, I'm like, 'I have to sell my dirt bike, KayLee. I don't ride it. I don't know if I will again,'” Kimberlee said. “She's like, 'No, if you sell it, Mom, you won't get another one. And I don't know if I can now.'"
Whatever it was, Kimberlee said KayLee would set out to do it, including graduating from Canyon View High School last May as a junior even after people told her she couldn't.
“That drove her even more because she just kept saying, 'Watch me. I'm going to graduate. I'm going to prove them wrong.'"
Now, many in the Cedar City and Enoch communities have come together to help the Duttons and honor KayLee’s memory.
That includes Alexx Kennedy who runs Venom Tattoos where KayLee made an impression when she got her first tattoo.
“She was such a sweet girl. She was awesome,” Kennedy said. “It was great tattooing her. She was darling, and so it kind of breaks my heart.”
Kennedy said in 24 hours, she received 150 messages from people wanting to participate in a fundraiser at the parlor, one of multiple parlors holding fundraisers for Kaylee.
There are also going to be window tinting, earring, and t-shirt salesto raise funds along with the GoFundMe.
It’s a community not unfamiliar with tragedy. It was two years ago this month that an Enoch man killed his wife and her mother, along with five of their children.
Kennedy says KayLee did something unusual by sending her a thank you note later. KayLee’s mom went to school with Kennedy’s husband, who’s now a local deputy that was on the scene investigating KayLee’s death.
Kimberlee said she and her daughter were like an Enoch version of Gilmore Girls.
“I was a baby having a baby, and we grew up together, and she taught me things, I taught her things,” Dutton said. “It's just been me and her since day one, and I've said this before and I'll say it till the day I die that she saved me.”
KayLee was Kimberlee’s maid of honor when she married Waylon, who has since adopted her. The night before KayLee was shot, Waylon came to her rescue to fix a shot spark plug that left her stranded.
He was going to take KayLee to the Supercross in Salt Lake City in a few months to see her favorite rider, Eli Tomac.
“She said, ‘I have to go. We have to go in May,’” Waylon Dutton said of his daughter. “ So we were planning on doing that. And then…”
Waylon said KayLee was always looking for something to do, including last Friday night.
“She came in. Her mom said, 'Where are you going now, Kaylee?' She said, 'I don't know. We're going to go find something.' My last words to her were, 'Just be careful.'"
Now, Kimberlee and Waylon say the memories of KayLee bring both laughter and tears, along with the anger that she’s gone.
“We just sit here on the couch and look out the window and just wait for her to come home. We just wait for her to walk in the door.”
Michael Edward Hess-Witucki, 23, Ethan Andrew Galloway, 23, Aldric Felipe, 21, and Matthew D. Sorber-Petrie, 22, were all taken into custody over the weekend and booked on one felony count of murder and 12 counts of felony discharge of a firearm.
