Gunshot victim a 'leader'

HEBER — For years, the Hispanic community of Summit and Wasatch counties looked to one couple to navigate through the bureaucracy of school districts, courts, local governments and health care.

Now, one-half of that couple is dead after a shooting Sunday night.

Aniceto Armendariz died Sunday night after two men fired at the truck Armendariz and his wife, Alma, were driving. One of two shotgun blasts hit Armendariz in the head and the truck he was driving rolled into a median on U.S. 40 near the Mayflower exit. The truck came to rest in lanes of oncoming traffic.

Armendariz, 43, died instantly, but Alma Armendariz was taken to a hospital, treated and released.

Police arrested a father and son — one near the scene of the crime and the other near the Stillwater Lodge at Jordanelle Reservoir. Antonio Palaez-Vasquez, 55, and Cunny A. Pelaez, 19, are being held in the Summit County Jail for investigation of aggravated homicide.

Investigators and Armendariz family members do not know what sparked the shooting, but Alma Armendariz believes her husband may have taught Pelaez in a driving school. She said she remembered his first name. A Wasatch County Sheriff's Office probable cause statement said the victim and one of the men arrested had been "associates . . . in a school setting."

The statement said that police found a 20-gauge shotgun near the scene of the accident, and that Pelaez identified it by describing the gun as one he had used before. Police said that Palaez-Vasquez was intoxicated, although it is unclear with what substance.

The Armendariz family had a stream of relatives and friends at their house Tuesday, and both Alma's and Aniceto's family members were traveling to Utah from Mexico this week. Children played on the house's front porch beneath two black ribbons someone had tied to the porch pillars. The scent of more than a dozen flower arrangements inside was overpowered only by the two full tables of food.

The Armendariz children talked quietly about their father with cousins and friends, occasionally breaking conversation to comfort a weeping relative or offer visitors water.

To Josue Armendariz, 18, it was inconceivable that anyone would harm his father, who was an example to his family and friends.

"I've always thought my dad was ahead of us because he was just such a great man, setting every pathway for us," Armendariz said. "He's in a good place because he was such a good man — too good to be in this corrupt world."