Downward spiral — Polite boy became troubled young man

In the end, a team of officers found Quinn Robert Martinez dazed and agitated in the dark basement of a friend's duplex about a mile from where the shootings occurred. He had told his friend he'd shot a man at a restaurant and needed more bullets.

Police searched for him all night. On confidential information he might be at a residence near the restaurant, police went to that address on East Union Avenue. "He's inside," a man told officers.

Martinez refused to surrender or show his hands to officers who called to him from the top of the landing. He sat there in the dark until they inched toward him with a flashlight. He was agitated, stepping side to side in the dark basement.

"His face was grimacing, and he was clenching his fists as if he were preparing to fight," Sandy detective Steve Christensen wrote in a police report detailing the capture. He'd cut his own arms. There was blood on his hands, arms and pants.

"He seemed to be struggling with the decision to fight or give up," Christensen wrote.

But in the end, police told Martinez his sister was worried about him, and he surrendered. With that, the young man ended an adult life of drug use and crime after a night of violence that left two men dead and three people seriously wounded.

"The scariest thing about this is, I was sitting here on the couch and watching the news on TV. I saw his face and said, 'Is that Quinn Martinez? Is that Quinn?' If this can happen with Quinn Martinez, it could happen to any household and to anybody's kid. This kid was not neglected. His parents were there for everything. They did everything right — that's the scariest thing right there." — Chris Giesing, long-time friend of the Martinez family.

So, what went wrong with Martinez, a former Boy Scout from a middle-class family?

He was a child whose Bennion-Taylorsville home was the neighborhood gathering spot, with a trampoline, playground equipment and the block's only half-pipe for skateboarding. A child whose most violent actions were catching snakes and hunting rabbits.

A young man who, even when he began running into trouble with the law, remained polite to law enforcement officers and his parents.

So, what happened? How did he become a young man his girlfriend said was "trigger happy" and armed at all times? How did he become a man with a meth habit, a lengthy rap sheet and a devilish clown tattooed on his forearm?

The answers won't come from Martinez. Now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, Martinez refused numerous requests for interviews by the Deseret Morning News.

He also discouraged his parents from meeting with the newspaper.

In a letter dated June 29, 2003, Martinez declined an interview.