Utah law enforcement officers spent Sunday investigating the deaths of three people — two believed to be victims of weekend homicides.
A medical examiner determined Ruben Deleon, 44, who lived at various residences throughout the Salt Lake Valley, died from blunt trauma to the head Sunday morning in the parking lot of an apartment complex near 3900 South and 700 West, South Salt Lake Police Sgt. Steve Daniels said.
Deleon went to a friend's apartment at the complex about 8 p.m. and left about midnight. "He was majorly intoxicated when he left the friend's home," Daniels said.
People said he was trying to stop cars going in and out of the complex. Some people heard a fight shortly after, Daniels said. Police have no one in custody.
In Grand County, Walter Pratt, 58, Sioux Falls, S.D., was stabbed several times about 7:15 a.m. Sunday off U-128 near the Fisher Towers turnoff, 21 miles from Moab, a Grand County sheriff's statement said.
People saw a man assaulting Pratt outside his vehicle. He was stabbed, he fell to the side of the road and his vehicle was driven away, witnesses said. A Utah Highway Patrol trooper spotted the vehicle parked about 25 miles east of the homicide scene. Troopers chased the driver on foot and apprehended him about a mile away, the statement said.
A 46-year-old Clifton, Colo., man was being held at the Grand County Jail for investigation of homicide, the statement said.
In the third case, the Utah Medical Examiner's Office is working to determine the cause of death of a 37-year-old woman from Fillmore.
The woman's body was discovered by search and rescue crews about 10 a.m. Sunday in Chalk Creek Canyon, two miles east of Fillmore, in an area with heavy oak brush, Millard County Sheriff Ed Phillips said.
She was reported missing April 1 and was last seen March 23 at a friend's residence.
"She was intoxicated and was threatening suicide. And she just walked away from there and had a bottle of liquor with her," Phillips said.
Search and rescue volunteers looked for the woman on Saturday and Sunday after authorities investigated activity on her bank account, checked a park she liked to visit and followed up on a possible sighting at a homeless shelter in Richfield, Phillips said.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com