SALT LAKE CITY — A man charged with firing several rounds at an FBI agent and a sheriff’s deputy near Aneth in San Juan County last week has been arrested on tribal land near Cortez, Colorado, authorities said.
An officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs arrested Cecil Vijil Jr., 37, about 7 p.m. Sunday after spotting him walking along U.S. 160 south of Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation.
Vijil was taken into custody without incident, the FBI said in a statement. He is charged in federal court in Salt Lake City with assault on an officer and discharging a firearm.
The federal authorities and Utah law enforcers began their search for Vijil Thursday, after they said he fired multiple rounds at an FBI agent and a San Juan County sheriff’s deputy who went to his home on the Navajo Nation.
Vijil is accused of appearing from behind his house armed with an AR-style rifle and firing in the officers’ direction while the law enforcers took cover in a car and backed up. No injuries were reported.
The officers were investigating a different shooting earlier in the day at a 7-Eleven about 50 miles away, where authorities say two men fired shots toward the store with the same type of gun. A clerk there had earlier refused to sell beer to a customer who did not have the proper identification. The FBI said a second man, Gary Lee Jr., was also being investigated in that incident.
Reports of gunfire shut down a nearby coronavirus mobile testing event Thursday and forced many who lived nearby to shelter at home.