O.C. Teen Held in Slaying After 17-Hour Search

A 14-year-old fugitive accused of killing a Nevada retiree was arrested near his mother’s Tustin home Friday night, 17 hours after he had eluded Costa Mesa police by jumping off a second-story motel balcony as they closed in.

After a daylong, countywide search, a police officer spotted Peter Quinn Elvik at 7:45 p.m., ending what investigators said was an odyssey that began in Carson City when a 63-year-old man was found shot to death on a rifle range on a desolate stretch of highway. His car and handguns were missing.

At 3 a.m. Friday, that car was spotted outside the Sea Lark Motor Hotel at 2274 Newport Blvd. in Costa Mesa. As police descended on the room, Elvik, tipped by the motel clerk that police were coming for him, jumped from the second-story landing and fled in the early morning darkness. Officers pursued with guns drawn, but a pair of bloodhounds lost the scent three blocks from the motel.

The 6-foot, 140-pound teen with a shaved head, blue eyes and a scar from his hip to his calf was standing alone near the intersection of Yolanda Way and Browning Avenue in Tustin when a police officer saw him Friday night. He was arrested without incident.

Family members said the youth had been staying with his grandparents in Douglas County, Nevada, and had run away Wednesday after an argument with his grandfather.

“We can’t understand it,” his grandfather, Ralph Elvik, 71 said. “We had picked him up Sunday and then Wednesday he was gone. He was a very depressed young lad when I last saw him.”

Elvik’s mother was stunned Friday to learn that police were calling her son a murder suspect.

“No! This is too much,” said Brenda K. Howell, sobbing. “Oh, God! No, no!”

Investigators said they had no idea who Elvik was or that he might be connected to the shooting in Carson City of William Leon Gibson until a veteran Costa Mesa officer came across the dead man’s car early Friday.

Officer Gaylen Mattson was cruising motel parking lots for stolen cars when a random check revealed that a 1987 Dodge Daytona parked at the Sea Lark had been reported stolen from a murder victim along Nevada’s Highway 50 East.

A motel employee told police that the car belonged to the occupant of room 58. But as officers were preparing to close in, police said, clerk Lloyd Crabtree called Elvik, who had checked in two hours earlier with a 14-year-old girlfriend.

Police officials said they plan to seek criminal charges against Crabtree for interfering with an investigation.

“It’s really difficult to do our jobs when people who are actually employees of the motel are assisting criminals,” FitzPatrick said.

Crabtree, an employee for several years, was fired from his job Friday morning, the motel owner said. “I just don’t understand how Lloyd would call that room,” said the owner, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld. “It’s just unbelievable. This is clearly against everything that we’ve talked about.”

Fitzpatrick said officers found a shotgun, possibly the murder weapon, in the stolen Daytona that Elvik was driving.

The 14-year-old Tustin girl who checked in with Elvik was questioned and released to her father, police said. She had been taken into custody in the motel room after Elvik fled.

Friday’s manhunt led Costa Mesa and Tustin police to the homes of the boy’s friends--some of whom reported seeing him earlier in the day.

Police said Elvik was not armed when the police officer spotted him a few blocks from his mother’s trailer home.

“He was arrested without incident,” Sgt. Bob Wilcox said. “There was no difficulty in making the arrest.”

Costa Mesa and Tustin police spent the evening question Elvik at Tustin police headquarters, as authorities from Nevada, Costa Mesa and Tustin sorted out jurisdiction in the case.

“This is going to be a messy one,” Wilcox said.

The youth was expected to be taken to Orange County juvenile hall and perhaps be extradited to Nevada today, Wilcox said.

Elvik’s father, who lives in San Diego County, said the teen-ager’s move to his grandparents’ home was meant to reduce friction between the boy and his mother.

Elvik’s grandparents had reported the boy missing Wednesday to the Douglas County sheriff’s office. Elvik had argued that night with his grandfather and snuck away from the home, family members said.

The boy’s grandmother, Constance Elvik, 69, said she was unaware Friday morning that the runaway was being sought for murder.

“I don’t understand. He ran away from here,” she said, “Has he done something wrong? Oh my God! What’s happened?”

The grandmother said the boy had rebounded from depression during a stay in Nevada last year. When he finished the school year at Douglas High School, he returned to Orange County to spend the summer with his mother. As the new school year approached, he returned last week to live with his grandparents.

“He wasn’t getting along with his mother; it wasn’t a good situation,” Constance Elvik said. “His grandfather went down and picked him up. But he was here only three days when he got into a verbal confrontation with [his] grandfather. Not a bad one. Just an argument.”

After the disagreement, the 14-year-old said he wanted to return to Tustin, relatives said. His grandfather balked at the idea of again making the 450-mile trip, and told the boy he could take a bus, Constance Elvik said. But Wednesday night, the teen slipped out of the home in the Alpine Villa Estates neighborhood with “nothing but the clothes on his back.”

At 8:30 a.m. Thursday, deputies were called to the Carson City Pistol and Rifle Range, a 24-hour, open-air facility on the Nevada River operated by the city recreation department. Gibson’s body had been discovered with a shotgun wound to the torso.

“I can’t imagine [Elvik] doing this,” his grandmother said. “I don’t think he’s been in serious trouble before.”

Elvik’s father, Laurence Elvik, a 44-year-old retail manager from Vista, said the boy’s mother and grandparents had found it increasingly difficult to rein in the teen.

“What my dad told me was that [Peter] wanted to go back to Tustin, because there he could do whatever he wanted,” Laurence Elvik said. “My parents kind of threw up their hands and said, ‘He’s going to do what he wants to do.’ We were making arrangements to bring him back down here.”

His father said Elvik has “run away from home a couple of times” and brushed with the law twice on shoplifting charges. But the teen seemed to settle in well to his life in Nevada and had made friends in the neighborhood.

When family members heard Elvik had run away, they assumed he would hitchhike to Tustin and hook up with a girlfriend he met over the summer, his father said. Laurence Elvik said he and the boy’s mother had hoped to find a solution for the boy.

“He had to live somewhere or he would just be a runaway,” Laurence Elvik said. “He’s nearly 15 and 6 feet tall.

“Other than chaining him down, there was little to do. I was going to get him enrolled in school down here and see what I could do to make a home for him.”

* GOOD SLEUTHING: Random license check turned up murder victim’s car. A40

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Evasive Fugitive

Police capture 14-year-old murder suspect after countywide search

1. Stolen car spotted in Costa Mesa motel parking lot. Suspect flees scene.

2. Suspect caught 17 hours later near his mother’s home in Tustin.