Three get rewards in catching killers

SALT LAKE CITY - A retired police officer and a couple have received a lucrative reward for helping catch two killers in Wyoming who escaped from a Utah jail.

Bill Johnson received $15,000, and David and Brittany Rogers received $5,000 during a ceremony Wednesday.

Danny Gallegos and Juan Diaz-Arevalo escaped from the Daggett County jail on Sept. 23, a breach that led to a statewide review of security at jails that are paid to house Utah prisoners.

Six days later, after roaming the remote woods and waters of northeastern Utah, Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo broke into Johnson's trailer while he was at a dance. They pounced on him when he returned, tied him up and stole his firearms and vehicle.

"I kept my mouth shut and they kept their mouths shut," Johnson, 79, recalled. "They treated me all right, no cussing or swearing."

Johnson was able to free himself. He ran to a road and flagged down the Rogers couple, who thought he was a "crazy farmer."

"Those guys, they tied me up and they stole my truck," Johnson urgently told them.

They called 911. Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo were captured in Sweetwater County after a chase with police.

Wyo man faces air threat charge

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A 38-year-old Wyoming man was arrested Wednesday for causing a disturbance on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Kirk Frederick Forest of Cheyenne was arrested for interfering with a flight crew, FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said. Arraignment on the federal charge was scheduled for Thursday.

"He was kind of agitated, and he made a threat against the plane," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said the nature of the threat was still being investigated, but Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Amanda Tobin Bielawski said Forest allegedly said the word "bomb."

The incident happened about 20 minutes before the flight from Seattle to Anchorage was to land at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, Bielawski said.

UW dean bids for presidency

GRAND FORKS, N.D. - A health sciences dean at the University of Wyoming is one of five candidates for the job of University of North Dakota president who have been invited to the campus in January.

The five are Robert Kelley, dean of UW's College of Health Sciences; Kathleen Long, a nursing dean at the University of Florida; Phyllis Johnson, director of a federal Agriculture Department research center in Beltsville, Md.; and two current UND deans, Bruce Smith of UND's aerospace school and Dennis Elbert, the school's business dean.

The search committee plans to submit three or four names to the state Board of Higher Education. A new president is expected to be named in February and take office in July, when Charles Kupchella, the current president, retires.

The search committee considered two other candidates -Thomas Keon, a business dean at the University of Central Florida, and UND Provost Greg Weisenstein - but they were not chosen for the January campus visits.

The seven candidates were interviewed this week in Minneapolis.