Wednesday's deadly confrontation with a teenage store clerk wasn't Donald Moyes' first encounter with trouble.
Prison officials were starting the process to revoke his parole because he failed drug tests and didn't report to his parole officer."We were on the verge of pulling him in," said Jack Ford, corrections spokesman. To revoke a person's parole, corrections officials must ask the Board of Pardons and Parole to issue a warrant. Ford said they were starting that process, but some of the delay can be attributed to burgeoning case loads.
"Our workload is very heavy," Ford said. "What we do is downgrade the amount of supervision we give them."
Department officials told legislators they were 38 agents short of being able to manage cases the way criteria says they should. Lawmakers gave them 10 new agents this year.
Moyes was killed Monday after confronting 17-year-old Nate Nusz, who was stocking shelves at Smith's Food and Drug, 3171 E. 3300 South. Investigators say Moyes ordered him to open the cash registers, but the teen could not do it because the registers were locked.
The man became angry, fired a shot into the ceiling and then shot Nusz twice in the chest and abdomen. Injured, the teen managed to wrest the gun away from the robber and then shot him in the back, killing him.
Nusz remained hospitalized Friday in fair condition.
Ford said Moyes' parole agent had been looking for him for weeks but was unable to locate him. Apparently, Moyes was arrested in Woods Cross on a felony charge on Feb. 23, but he was allowed to post $5,000 bail.
Randy Minson, administrative assistant to the Davis County sheriff, said jailers didn't hold him because they didn't know he was on parole. All county jails have computer access to a list of all people in the custody and under the supervision of the Department of Corrections, which is about 10,000 people.
Minson said jail officers ran Moyes' name, but it wasn't on the list. Ford said Moyes has been on the list since Dec. 3, 1986, when he was placed on probation for a robbery charge.
"We're not trying to point the finger," Ford said, but added that the department planned on sending the woman who trains people on the computer system to Davis County to see what went wrong.
"We'll ask the trainer to see why it is they say they couldn't find him," Ford said.
While corrections officials sort out how Moyes could stay out of jail after violating his parole, deputy sheriffs are finishing their investigation into the early morning shooting.
Deputies initially thought Moyes' wife might have been involved because she called dispatchers about 3 a.m., and said she'd been told her husband had been shot and then hung up.
"We thought maybe she'd been there," said deputy sheriff Jim Potter. "Then it turned out she got that information not because she was there, but because (the getaway driver) told her."
After interviewing Moyes' wife, deputies arrested John Dave West-er-man, 38, and booked him into jail for investigation of aggravated robbery. Potter said the driver dropped Moyes off a few blocks from the store and Moyes rode a bicycle to the Canyon Rim Smith's.
"His plan was to rob the store and meet (the driver) at another location," Potter said. Moyes never left the store after getting into a fight with the clerk.