A member of the Navajo Nation has been charged with murder in the April death of another Navajo man in April near Bluff, Utah, on the Navajo Nation reservation.
Perry Maryboy is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Antonio Montowine, who was shot in front of his wife and son on April 13, about 2 1/2 miles south of Bluff.
FBI agents arrested Perry Maryboy without incident early Wednesday morning at a residence in Bluff, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Utah said Friday. Maryboy made his first court appearance Friday, and is being detained in the Weber County jail. A detention hearing is set for Thursday.
In a court filing, FBI Special Agent Jarrod Girod described in an affidavit the shooting and the trail that led to Maryboy’s arrest.
On April 13, the affidavit said, Montowine was driving a van, with his wife and son as passengers, searching for a lost pet. They drove past a white pick-up truck parked on the wife’s family’s property, along County Road 443 on the reservation, as the truck’s driver texted on a cellphone. Montowine stopped to talk to the driver about trash-dumping that had happened on the property.
Montowine and the driver got into an argument, the affidavit said, and the driver held up a handgun and fired a shot into the air. As Montowine tried to get back in the van, the driver shot a second time, hitting Montowine in the back of the head. The driver got into the truck and drove away.
Montowine’s wife — identified only as Re.G. in the court papers — provided a description of the driver to a composite sketch artist, and a description of the truck. Three days later, the wife saw a vehicle on the reservation that resembled the truck, and provided the Utah license plate number to the FBI. The truck was registered to Linda Maryboy, the wife of Perry Maryboy.
Jerrica Maryboy, a receptionist at Maryboy Construction, told Girod that the composite sketch resembled Perry, her cousin. Records obtained from Verizon and Google showed that Perry Maryboy’s phone was in use at the location of the shooting before Montowine was killed, the affidavit said.
The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s office because the death happened on the Navajo Nation reservation.
