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A Native American man has been arrested in connection with the suspected murder of a 7-year-old child on a Colorado reservation.
Jeremiah Hight, 23, of the Ute Mountain Tribe, was arrested on Christmas Eve on top of a mesa, west of Oljato, by the Navajo Police Department after more than a week on the run, authorities said.
He had been wanted for the murder of a minor on the Ute Mountain Reservation in the early morning hours of December 11.
The child was killed in a shooting, targeted at a residence, according to the FBI, though authorities have not released any details about what led up to the shooting. Hight’s arrest warrant was sealed.
Law enforcement authorities had been searching for Hight in the Oljato area since Saturday, December 21, with a $10,000 reward offered for information leading to his capture.
He was taken into federal custody without incident.
Hight is described as having brown hair and brown eyes. He is 6 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds.
He has tattoos on his right leg, left arm, right arm, right shoulder, neck, and left shoulder as well a a pierced left ear and a scar on his chest.
According to the FBI, Hight has ties to Monument Valley in the Four Corners area.
In a video message after the shooting, tribal chairman Manuel Heart called the shooting “senseless” and urged people to let authorities investigate the shooting rather than retaliate on their own.
Heart also said he was working on a resolution to request the federal government to hire more police officers for the reservation and another to ban shooting within either of the reservation’s two communities — Towaoc and White Mesa, Utah.
“We are not going to have any more of these type of events where somebody gets shot,” he said.
