ST. GEORGE — One man is in jail after a report of a runaway teen led investigators in two jurisdictions to search for the missing girl, along with the tens of thousands of dollars that also went missing from the teen’s home.
The arrest stems from what began as a report of a runaway teen who had left her home in St. George on July 12.
Officers responded and spoke to the family who provided information to help locate the youth. But the efforts were unsuccessful, and officers were unable to find the girl during the initial search, according to charging documents filed with the court.
While the teen was still missing, officers received information from the family that $80,000 in cash and two guns were missing from a relative’s residence in Washington City. Investigators also learned the missing teen had the code to the gun safe, leading them to suspect the girl might have taken the cash and firearms.
Suspicions were raised during an inspection of the gun safe that did not appear to be damaged, which suggested that whoever opened the safe did so without using any force.
In the meantime, officers located the teen’s boyfriend who was arrested for suspected marijuana and other unrelated charges and was then transported to the juvenile detention center.
Shortly thereafter, officers in Washington City located the runaway at a residence on North Paseos Drive where they found the girl alone in the home that served as an Airbnb rental.
According to the report, the teen told officers she had been staying at the rental with friends for the past few days — a home she said was rented by an adult.
When asked, the teen told officers she did not know the names of any of the individuals she was staying with.
One of the parents of the teen responded to the scene and both agreed to speak with police, which is when the juvenile reportedly told officers she had taken approximately $20,000 from a family member’s safe but denied any knowledge of the missing firearms.
The teen said she had been at the rental since Friday night and had “wiped her cell phone clean and discarded it so it could not be tracked,” the officer noted.
After discarding the cell phone, the teen used a laptop computer to communicate with the individuals who had brought her to the rental. The teen told authorities she gave the cash to her boyfriend who had left her there shortly after checking in.
Later, officers received information indicating the boyfriend likely still had the cash at the time of his arrest, and they “were fairly certain” he left the money at the house in St. George where he had been arrested and then transported to the detention center.
Officers were given one of the two keys that went to a lockbox in the girl’s possession when she ran away.
Armed with a warrant, officers searched the residence where the boyfriend had been arrested in St. George. During the search, officers recovered a key that was identical to the one they recovered from the runaway, leading investigators to believe it was the second of two keys the runaway had with her when she left.
They also recovered approximately $500 in cash in a wallet belonging to another individual who was identified as 19-year-old Justin DeLeon Martinez.
Officers learned the boyfriend had been at the apartment with Martinez, since the two were friends, and had brought the lockbox-safe to the unit days earlier. Additionally, the money found in Martinez’s wallet was cash given to the suspect by the runaway’s boyfriend who “had the money from the burglary.”
The key recovered during a search of the home was in fact the second key to the safe, and then investigators recovered the cell phone belonging to the runaway’s boyfriend.
Officers also learned that Martinez had reportedly thrown the safe that contained “all of the money and drugs” out of the window as soon as Martinez saw officers pulling up to the residence to execute the search warrant.
Investigators received information suggesting there was roughly $10,000 in cash in the safe, and the report also alleges that Martinez admitted he knew the boyfriend had left the safe in the apartment and was aware there were drugs in the safe as well.
When asked, he said he knew officers would come to the apartment, so he threw the safe out the window. He called a friend to pick it up, he said, to avoid getting into trouble for having drugs in the apartment.
The suspect was arrested for hindering the investigation by hiding the safe and the cash stored inside from officers during a felony burglary investigation. He was then transported to Purgatory Correctional Facility and is being held without bail while the case is under review by the Washington County Attorney’s Office.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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