Police Seeking 2 Men, Dodge Tied to Killings

A dark blue Dodge Ram Charger used in an attempted purse snatching at grocery store Saturday may be the same vehicle stolen after a double homicide in Arizona earlier that day, authorities said.

Two men fled in the vehicle after the failed robbery, police said.

“It looks good that it’s the same vehicle,” said Mohave County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Dale Lent from Arizona. “If we’re lucky someone will get these turkeys tonight or tomorrow.”

Added Huntington Beach Lt. Jeff Cope: “We want people cognizant that this is serious. These people are armed and dangerous. If they see the vehicle, boom, dial 911.”

Lent said the Ram Charger was stolen after a man in a remote area of west Arizona, 35 miles east of Kingman, stopped to help the driver of a vehicle stuck in the sand along Interstate 40.

The occupants of the stranded car--later determined to have been stolen from Missouri--shot the man, then drove three miles to his home and shot his wife early Saturday, Lent said. The owner of the Missouri vehicle remains missing, he said.

“It appeared the male was trying to help them dig out their car when they shot him,” said Lent from Bullhead City, Ariz.

The couple, whose identities were being withheld, were discovered about 9 a.m. Saturday by a hunter, Lent said.

“We don’t have any motive right now. Just robbery for their vehicle,” he said. “All we have right now is foot tracks.”

Cope said a vehicle with the same description came to the attention of local authorities after two men in the Charger--which has “4 x 4” painted on the side and Arizona plates--bungled an attempt to snatch a woman’s purse at the Hughes Market on Algonquin Street.

Cope said a 30-year-old Huntington Beach woman was shopping at the market about 6:35 p.m. when a man wearing a red baseball cap grabbed her purse from a shopping cart and ran from the store.

Another shopper, a 40-year-old Huntington Beach man, chased the man into the store’s parking lot where he dropped the purse and headed for the parked Ram Charger, police said. As the shopper approached the truck, a man in the vehicle fired three shots with a semiautomatic pistol and sped off. None of the shots hit the shopper.

The two suspects were described as white, both about 30 years old. One man is about 6-feet-2, with a thin beard and mustache. The other man is thin with a “transient-like” appearance.