CEDAR CITY — The victim of a fatal shooting Sunday evening in a remote area of Iron County has been identified by authorities as Shawn Laroy Young, 48, of Beryl.
As previously reported, Jessica Lynn Sabo, 42, was arrested and booked into Iron County Jail early Monday in connection with the incident, which transpired on private property north of Beryl in the sparsely populated Hamlin Valley area. Sabo faces a single count of murder, a first-degree felony.
Court documents filed on Wednesday reveal additional details about the incident. The victim was found dead in the doorway of a travel trailer of an apparent shotgun wound.
According to a probable cause statement filed by an Iron County Sheriff’s Office investigator in support of Sabo’s arrest, responding deputies first encountered Sabo later that evening walking in the roadway about a quarter mile from the property, naked from the waist up.
“There appeared to be blood on her socks and shoes,” the charging document states. “Detectives attempted to speak with Jessica about the events and provided her with the Miranda warning.”
However, the affidavit notes that Sabo wouldn’t answer questions and would only speak about unrelated events. She was then taken into custody.
Deputies had responded to the scene after dispatchers received a call at about 8:30 p.m. from an adult male who said a female subject had shot a man and that the man was dead.
The caller, who reportedly lives in a different trailer on the same property, told investigators he had first found the deceased man in the doorway of a travel trailer with a gunshot wound to his right shoulder blade.
According to the affidavit, the witness then drove down the road to get help when he saw Sabo walking in the roadway, unclothed from the waist up and carrying a shotgun and a water jug.
“The witness then drove (in) the opposite direction away from Jessica,” the statement said.
Deputies responded to the scene at 10:30 p.m., approximately two hours after the initial call (the remote location is about a two-hour drive from downtown Cedar City).
Once deputies had arrived and taken Sabo into custody, they also executed a search warrant and found signs of a possible struggle near the trailer, including a portable campfire pit and a cooler that had both been overturned. Three shells from a .410 shotgun were located on a cot near the trailer, according to the affidavit.
Additionally, officers reportedly found a notebook on which the words “I’m sorry” were written in pencil.
The affidavit, which doesn’t identify Young by name, notes that he “had an obvious gunshot wound to the right shoulder blade area of his back and a wound on his chest. The wound is consistent with a shotgun wound, based on a large round hole on the back and several small holes on the front chest area.”
The decedent’s wounds were not consistent with being self-inflicted, the affidavit adds.
Sabo made her initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon via WebEx videoconference before 5th District Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen, who ordered that Sabo continue to be held without bail in Iron County Jail.
A cursory search of Utah court records shows Sabo’s criminal history includes a handful of drug-related offenses, mostly in the Ogden area. Her most recent serious charge was an attempted aggravated assault that occurred Oct. 13, 2020, when Sabo allegedly refused to leave a vehicle she had been staying in and brandished a knife at a responding police officer.
That case, which saw several delays and a mental competency evaluation, ended with Sabo entering a guilty plea to the class A misdemeanor count, for which she was sentenced in November 2022 to 364 days in the Weber County Jail, with credit given for time already served.
This report is based on statements from court documents and law enforcement officials 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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