In the end, a team of officers found Quinn Robert Martinez dazed and agitated in the dark basement of a friend's duplex about a mile from where the shootings occurred. He had told his friend he'd shot a man at a restaurant and needed more bullets.
Police searched for him all night. On confidential information he might be at a residence near the restaurant, police went to that address on East Union Avenue. "He's inside," a man told officers.
Martinez refused to surrender or show his hands to officers who called to him from the top of the landing. He sat there in the dark until they inched toward him with a flashlight. He was agitated, stepping side to side in the dark basement.
"His face was grimacing, and he was clenching his fists as if he were preparing to fight," Sandy detective Steve Christensen wrote in a police report detailing the capture. He'd cut his own arms. There was blood on his hands, arms and pants.
"He seemed to be struggling with the decision to fight or give up," Christensen wrote.
But in the end, police told Martinez his sister was worried about him, and he surrendered. With that, the young man ended an adult life of drug use and crime after a night of violence that left two men dead and three people seriously wounded.
"The scariest thing about this is, I was sitting here on the couch and watching the news on TV. I saw his face and said, 'Is that Quinn Martinez? Is that Quinn?' If this can happen with Quinn Martinez, it could happen to any household and to anybody's kid. This kid was not neglected. His parents were there for everything. They did everything right — that's the scariest thing right there." — Chris Giesing, long-time friend of the Martinez family.
So, what went wrong with Martinez, a former Boy Scout from a middle-class family?
He was a child whose Bennion-Taylorsville home was the neighborhood gathering spot, with a trampoline, playground equipment and the block's only half-pipe for skateboarding. A child whose most violent actions were catching snakes and hunting rabbits.
A young man who, even when he began running into trouble with the law, remained polite to law enforcement officers and his parents.
So, what happened? How did he become a young man his girlfriend said was "trigger happy" and armed at all times? How did he become a man with a meth habit, a lengthy rap sheet and a devilish clown tattooed on his forearm?
The answers won't come from Martinez. Now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, Martinez refused numerous requests for interviews by the Deseret Morning News.
He also discouraged his parents from meeting with the newspaper.
In a letter dated June 29, 2003, Martinez declined an interview.
"I don't see that any good can come of it," Martinez wrote. "I've spent the last three years in solitary confinement and maximum security, neither of which I would call living a life."
News coverage will only get him "stuck" longer, he wrote. "Not only that but it's only opening an old wound for my family. They're tryin' to put this behind them. Not go through it over and over."
A review of documents, interviews with people close to Martinez and his family and talks with gang detectives who tracked Martinez's activities before the shooting paint a picture of a polite young boy interested in sports and Scouts who grew into a troubled young man. By all accounts, Martinez was a follower who got in over his head with bad people and drugs and then snapped during a meth binge.
"I felt so bad for everybody involved in it," said Matt Giesing, 24, who grew up with Martinez.
"I felt bad for his family, too, because I never would have expected it out of him. It was all so sad."
For several years, the Giesings reared their family with Robert and Susan Martinez on Hawksbill Drive in the Taylorsville-Bennion neighborhood.
Chris Giesing and her family had only lived in the neighborhood for a few days, and the family didn't know many people when her middle son, Matt, was born.
"Right after that, the doorbell rang one day and here was this really pretty blonde lady saying, "Hi, my name is Sue Martinez and I'm bringing you dinner.' She was pregnant with Quinn at the time."
The Martinezes had three girls ahead of Quinn, and when Sue delivered her son, a huge banner appeared across the garage: "It's a boy!"
"They were so excited," Giesing said.
Classmates remember Martinez as a smaller-than-average, good child, with no inclination to violence.
The Martinez house was the hangout. Both Bob and Sue Martinez were den leaders in Scouts. They attended school functions and supported their children.
Target shooting was one of the activities Martinez shared with his father, and when he was 13, that hobby forever altered the boy's life.
"As for administrators — who may not realize to what degree they have the power to destroy lives — stop and think: This tragedy might have been averted had those in authority treated the 13-year-old boy in a fair and unprejudiced manner." — Suzanne Fraseur, a family acquaintance, wrote in a letter to reporters shortly after sentencing last July.
It is unclear whether Martinez loaned a schoolmate his dad's .22-caliber handgun or whether the student took the gun without permission. Nevertheless, the weapon wound up at South Jordan Middle School, where the other boy playfully showed it around. The gun was quickly confiscated, and Martinez and his friend were called on the carpet.
School officials decided to expel Martinez, while the other boy was suspended but allowed to stay at school, according to family and friends. The district provided no other school opportunity. Martinez stayed home.
Ten years ago, Martinez was a follower, and the children with whom he associated that year provided him his first look at criminal activity, according to family and friends. They all had time on their hands for trouble.
Jack and Carolee Green had been worried about that possibility.
The Greens reared their six children not far from the Martinez family near 1500 West and 6600 South in the Taylorsville-Bennion neighborhood.
Shortly before the gun incident, the Martinezes had moved to South Jordan. But Jack Green, who was president of the Martinezes' former LDS stake in Taylorsville-Bennion, met with Jordan School District administrators as a character witness for Martinez when the gun incident occurred at the new school.
"I thought some leniency ought to be looked at," Green said recently. "I thought they should consider how active the family was with their children."
But Jordan School District officials apparently disagreed, and Martinez was kicked out of school for a year.
Today, 10 years later, privacy issues prevent school district officials from talking about the incident for which Martinez left South Jordan Middle School just before Christmas in 1992. He did not return until a year later, but Martinez was in and out of the school system, said Melinda Colton, a district spokeswoman.
Dennis Johnson was principal of the middle school in 1992 and is now the district's director of planning and student records.
He doesn't remember the incident, according to Colton. "It doesn't ring a bell with him."
Then and now, the district has a "zero tolerance" policy when it comes to weapons on campus, she said. In every case, the student is automatically suspended until the hearing before administrators — teachers, counselors and other officials who investigate the incident and determine what will happen with the student. If a student is expelled or "suspended," the district arranges a home tutor, and Martinez apparently received those services, Colton said.
Colton could not comment on why the boy might have been expelled for a year while the other student only suspended but allowed to return to school that year.
"Information might have come out at the hearing that made that decision viable," she said.
Shortly after he was expelled, South Jordan police officers first arrested Martinez at his home.
He was 14, South Jordan police Sgt. Dan Starks said.
And Martinez's spotty attendance record after that is detailed in school records, which show Martinez did finish the ninth grade a year later in 1994, then missed two months when he would have traditionally enrolled as a sophomore at Bingham High School. He showed up for a few months from November to January 1995. Then in January 1995, he disappeared from the school district records for good.
That same month, 16-year-old Martinez was convicted of aggravated robbery, according to 3rd District Juvenile Court records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Because he was a juvenile at the time, details about this arrest and conviction are protected.
On Dec. 16, 1997, 18-year-old Martinez tried to walk out of the ShopKo, 2290 S. 1300 East, with a Sony PlayStation.
Store security caught him, and Martinez spent one day in jail on a shoplifting charge. He was released but didn't show up for a court date a few weeks later, and a judge eventually ordered him to spend 30 days in jail.
The sentence was suspended, according to court records.
What followed the December shoplifting incident is an escalating pattern of shoplifting, robbery, theft and burglary — and an increasing disregard for the punishments given by court officials.
In the two years before the Chevys shootings, Martinez was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail nine times on a variety of offenses, according to a survey of court records.
Jail records show he first spent time in the Salt Lake County Jail in August of 1997, three weeks after he turned 18.
By the time he was 19, Martinez appeared on the radar of the Salt Lake Metro Gang Unit, whose detectives say he was involved with the Sureos 38th Street gang, a local street group active in auto theft, drugs and weapons offenses.
Jan. 9, 1998. Martinez took a new $200 leather coat off a rack at Dillard's department store in Sandy, left his old jacket on the rounder, and walked out of the store. When confronted by a Sandy police officer outside the store, Martinez admitted to swapping the two coats. He was cited for theft and released.
July 5, 1998. Martinez was involved in a vehicle burglary and car theft near Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. Martinez eventually pleaded guilty to the two charges and was sentenced to 365 days in jail. But a judge suspended the entire sentence in August 1999.
July 13, 1998. Martinez was arrested with a friend in connection with an investigation into a stolen car. Martinez originally ran from police, but officers located him at a Holiday Oil station, 3189 W. 7800 South.
He had a stolen 9 mm. handgun in the waistband of his baggy pants, according to West Jordan police reports. Martinez was charged with attempting to receive stolen property and spent five days in jail.
Between August 1998 and February 1999, Martinez was in and out of jail three times and spent a total of three months behind bars for continually violating judges' orders.
July 26, 1999. He was picked up again on a parole violation and stayed in jail until Jan. 5, 2000.
By all accounts, Martinez was given every chance to turn his life around. The fact he didn't and that his behavior turned so violent is distressing to those charged with watching him through his criminal life.
One of Martinez's former probation officers, who did not want to be identified, said the shooting was unexpected. Still clearly shaken by Martinez's actions the night of April 27, 2000, the official finds even remembering the incident upsetting.
"You don't know who is going to do what or what's going to trigger them," he said.
The probation official met once with Martinez, shortly after he was released from jail in January 2000.
At that time, Martinez was well-mannered and seemed motivated to do well. He signed a probation agreement that included stipulations he would not use drugs or alcohol, he would obtain a high school General Education Degree, and he would have a psychological evaluation from Valley Mental Health.
Martinez did meet with Valley Mental Health in January — but he did not show up three weeks later for an orientation and assessment with doctors.
In February, probation officials performed a field visit at Martinez's job at Associated Foods, where Quinn's father, Robert, worked as a truck mechanic and had helped him get a job. Everything checked out then.
But Martinez didn't report to probation for his monthly visit in March. On April 13, probation officials filed an affidavit with 3rd District Court Judge Judith Atherton for a warrant for Quinn Martinez's arrest.
She issued the warrant April 28, the day after the Chevys shootings.
On April 22, 2000, a Saturday, someone stole a .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun from a car parked at the Westerner, a popular country/Western hangout on Redwood Road, said detective Travis Peterson, lead detective on the Chevys shooting for Sandy police.
That same night, Martinez was involved in a shooting in Taylorsville after he fought with the boyfriend of an acquaintance at a party and was thrown out.
After the fight, police believe Martinez drove by the house and fired several gunshots into the residence. Shots hit a couple of vehicles and a condominium, but no one was injured. Investigators later matched the bullet casings in that shooting to the ammunition used in the Chevys shooting.
Three days later, Martinez used that gun to kill Jason Rasmussen and Peter Berg, and wound Debbie Briggs, Joshua Parker and Jamie Lucero.
Martinez spent the day before the shooting in Room 339 of the Extended Stay America Hotel, smoking and injecting methamphetamine, according to court testimony.
He knew he was wanted for the probation violation and was staying there to avoid being arrested, according to detective Peterson. He was on a "never-ending" meth binge.
"His life was spiraling downward, with the people he was running with and the continual use of drugs," said Robert
Stott, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case for Salt Lake County.
"It's all focused around their next fix. Meth is their family. It's their life," Katie Bernards Goodman, head of the drug unit for the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, said of the meth abusers she sees every day. "They get so tweaked out. They get so focused they have blinders on, and all they can think about is the fix."
Short-term effects of the drug include a sense of well-being but also paranoia, hallucinations, aggressive behavior and uncontrollable movements like twitching and jerking.
The long term effects of meth use include kidney and lung disorders, possible brain damage, depression, insomnia, behavior resembling paranoid schizophrenia hallucinations and violent and aggressive behavior.
These descriptions match what attorney Steve McCaughey says about his client's actions that night. "Meth was the cause of the crime, of the irrational paranoid behavior that we saw," he said.
Martinez had used the drug on and off for two or three years, McCaughey said. "He was in an extreme period of agitation during that time."
In a preliminary hearing four months after the shooting, Martinez's girlfriend, Jamie Lucero, testified Martinez and their friends had been using drugs for two to three weeks before the shootings.
On April 26, the day before the shootings, Lucero, Martinez, his sister SeAnn Linn Martinez and Manuel "Bobo" Fernandez were in Room 339 of the Extended Stay America motel.
Quinn Martinez and Manuel Fernandez were in and out of the motel room several times during the day.
During the daylight hours, Lucero testified she observed Martinez displaying and cleaning a black semi-automatic handgun and bullets that were inserted into a magazine.
At different points during the day, Martinez and Fernandez used drugs, drove around and made a variety of stops at the homes of relatives and acquaintances, according to police.
They borrowed clothes from a friend in West Valley City. They drove to the home of Fernandez's sister and borrowed money. They went to the home of a friend, who lived only blocks from the Extended Stay America motel, and worked on a car they were driving.
Later in the day, Martinez and Fernandez went to the Utah State Liquor Store in Midvale and bought two bottles of blackberry brandy and some Long Island Ice Teas. They drank most of the alcoholic Long Island Ice Teas before they left the parking lot.
After cruising around again, they attended a function hosted by Fernandez's family at Murray Park, where they drank the blackberry brandy and shot up crystal meth.
Manuel Fernandez told police the two were extremely intoxicated. "We were all f----ed up," he told police. "Our head wasn't right."
Fernandez's mother asked them to leave the family function because of their condition.
At this points the two left the park and returned to the Extended Stay America. It was just before 8:30 p.m.
Martinez and Fernandez had been driving around all day in a white 1978 two-door Pontiac Grand-Am that had been loaned to Lucero, and she was mad they'd been gone all day. Martinez gave Lucero the car keys when the two returned to the hotel room but then demanded them back shortly after.
Lucero testified that about 8:30 p.m., when she refused to surrender the keys, the two had a heated argument.
"You better shut the f--- up or I'm going to blast you," Quinn told her.
"Do what you gotta do," Lucero said.
So, Quinn Martinez shot Lucero in the right leg, then leveled the gun at Lucero's torso. "I should kill you, bitch."
Fernandez fled the motel room, and SeAnn Martinez and Lucero went out a side door of the main motel building to obtain medical attention. The four met up in the parking lot where Quinn racked another bullet into the chamber and fired a shot police recovered from the parking lot.
SeAnn Martinez, Lucero and Fernandez drove away.
A minute later, Quinn Martinez left and walked across the parking lot toward Chevys restaurant next door.
A day or two after the shootings, Chevys employees found a small pencil drawing of a gangster figure and a note on the green bus that sits in front of the business and is the Chevys trademark.
"Quinn — We love you bro and miss you. Keep your head up. All your friends. Much love."
Investigators believe Fernandez drew the picture and wrote the note.
On July 25, 2003, Martinez turned 25.
He spends 21 hours of his day in a 5-by-12 cell with a cellmate who came to prison in 1996 after being convicted of first- and third-degree homicide and aggravated assault.
Because of his notoriety, Martinez is housed in the prison's maximum security "Uinta" units. Uinta 1 is where the worst of the worst prisoners are held. It's called "super max," and Martinez stayed in this unit only briefly before moving to Uinta 4, the least severe of the maximum security units.
In Uinta 4 he can be out of his cell three hours a day. In his free time, he exercises, showers and makes phone calls. His parents bought him new reading glasses, so he spends a lot of time reading. He is what is called a "unit laborer," sweeping, cleaning, picking up meal trays for 40 cents an hour.
Last September he enrolled in the prison's high school program and has attended regularly. He has done OK as an inmate, says Jack Ford, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections. No trouble. No write-ups. "He is not a problem inmate," Ford said.
It is unclear whether Martinez receives treatment for his drug problems.
He tried to be transferred to a prison in Colorado but was turned down.
In maximum security, Martinez can have one visit a week. His mother, Susan Martinez, visits regularly, but she's the only one.
E-mail: lucy@desnews.com