Garfield County inmate sought after using school bus to flee custody
After running from police and stealing a car, according to police, the man was still on the run early Saturday.
The inmate, Tam Nguyen, 30, was convicted in 1995 of manslaughter and had been serving his sentence in the Garfield County Jail.
While he was supposed to be helping to clean the school bus Friday afternoon, he climbed inside a storage compartment and remained there when the bus left the jail, according to Garfield County spokeswoman Becki Bronson.
The jail provides a car wash service to county residents.
Later in the afternoon, the driver of the bus found Nguyen hiding while the bus was in a parking lot away from the jail. The driver immediately called police and told Nguyen not to move, Bronson said.
However, Nguyen ran from the driver, stole a car and drove east from Panguitch on state Route 89. Nguyen later found his way into Kane County, dispatchers said. All the while, squad cars were in pursuit.
Police later found the stolen car abandoned outside of Glendale in a sparsely populated area.
Police officers from several agencies were in Kane and Garfield counties Friday nigh looking for Nguyen. They ranged from city departments to county sheriff's offices to the Utah Department of Public Safety, which deployed its helicopter, according to a spokesman.
E-mail: rpalmer@desnews.com
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