Alpine man describes abduction, threats

PROVO — A man accused of posing as a census worker and holding a couple hostage at gunpoint in their Alpine home was unaware their daughter was on the phone with a police dispatcher as the event unfolded.

Tyler Archuleta, 37, of Price, on Wednesday was bound over for trial by 4th District Judge Claudia Laycock. He is charged with four first-degree felonies of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and two counts of aggravated kidnapping; terroristic threats, a second-degree felony; and forgery, a third-degree felony.

Allen Alexander, the president and CEO of Savage Services Corp., testified Wednesday at a preliminary hearing that Archuleta was waiting for him when he returned from work to his home on Cottonwood Circle on Sept. 22.

Archuleta's trucking company had past dealings with Savage, a materials transportation company based in Cottonwood Heights.

Archuleta showed Alexander a fake U.S. Census Bureau badge and asked him a few questions before pulling a handgun on him, Alexander said.

Archuleta allegedly demanded $100 million and forced Alexander and his wife into their bedroom. Archuleta told them he represented a group of investors who had been wronged by Savage, though the precise nature of his grievance is unclear.

Archuleta allegedly told the couple he had placed C-4 plastic explosives on their home and at the company's offices.

Alexander said Archuleta worried aloud that if the two men left to get the money he was demanding, Alexander's wife would be a "loose end."

"I thought I was on the edge of dying," Alexander said. "I thought if I could just separate her, he would just have me."

So he suggested they tie his wife up so she could not call the police after they left.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Archuleta or Alexander, police were being guided to the home by the couple's 15-year-old daughter.

Archuleta allegedly tried to make the couple take him to another location where they would stay the night before going to a bank in the morning, but police swarmed in as they drove down the driveway.

An investigator testified that Archuleta said in an interview he had originally planned to target another Savage executive. However, when he called that man's house and spoke to his wife, again posing as a census worker, he heard children in the background and changed his mind.

A backpack Archuleta was carrying on the night of the incident was found to contain a clipboard with a census questionnaire, burglary tools, bullets, a loaded crossbow and 14 arrows, a Lone Peak police officer testified.

Archuleta is being held in the Utah County Jail on $50,000 cash-only bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 18.

e-mail: pkoepp@desnews.com