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The remains of a person believed to be the suspect in the 2010 shooting of a Utah park ranger were found Thursday in Grand County.
The Grand County Sheriff's Office said in a news release that a student who was home on a break from college found a human bone and a bag containing a handgun and magazine in an area adjacent to Tangri-La Ranch.
Law enforcement personnel then searched the area — which is covered with huge boulders and ledges that form numerous caves and crevasses — and found the remains by crawling through a narrow entryway to a void in the rocks that is about 6 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet high, according to the release.
Based on evidence found at the site, investigators believe the remains are those of Lance Leeroy Arellano, the man suspected of shooting park ranger Brody Young, the release says. The remains will be taken to the Utah Medical Examiner's Office for positive identification.
The sheriff's office said the student, Caleb Shumway, was specifically searching the area for Arellano.
Shumway, a 23-year-old Utah Valley University student, said he and his 15-year-old brother had decided to spend two weeks over winter break searching for Arellano — a mission their police officer father helped with five years earlier. An outstanding $30,000 reward for Arellano was part of the draw, Shumway said.
"For a poor college student, that's pretty appealing," he said.
Shumway added that resolving the case was a big thing for the Moab community. "There's lots of closure that would come with finding this guy because no one really knew if he was dead or alive," he explained.
Shumway, an Eagle Scout who grew up exploring caves and canyons in the area, said he was confident he could find Arellano's body after studying the case and discussing the search area with his father.
"I kind of had a good idea of what had happened," he said.
He and his brother were two days into their search when they discovered a bone and the bag with the gun near the mouth of a cave on Wednesday.
Shumway hopped down and under boulders and took pictures. Then they met with police Thursday and took officers back out to the site. They found more skeletal remains, clothing and another backpack with another gun deeper in the cave.
Shumway believes the first bone and bag he spotted had been dragged to the cave's mouth by an animal recently. He was awaiting word on whether he would get the reward.
At the time of the shooting, Young, then 34, had pulled into the Poison Spider Mesa trailhead just after 8 p.m. the day of the shooting to speak with the driver of a parked vehicle. The man had no identification but gave a fake name and birth date.
As Young walked to his truck to check the information, the man shot him nine times from behind. The ranger fired back several times and then crawled 30 feet back to his truck to call for help. Bullets were lodged in his lung, heart, shoulder, back, hip and groin.
The suspect had a gunshot wound and fled into the desert outside Moab. Deputies searched the area but did not find Young's attacker.
Arellano, then 40, was later charged with attempted murder but never found. Young returned to work about a year after the shooting and is now assistant coordinator of Utah's statewide boating program..
Twitter: @PamelaManson