A Native American man has been arrested in connection with the alleged murder of a seven-year-old child on a Colorado reservation.
Jeremiah Hight, 23, of the Ute Mountain Tribe, was apprehended on Christmas Eve by the Navajo Police Department on top of a mesa west of Oljato after fleeing for more than a week, according to authorities.
He was wanted for the murder of a minor on the Ute Mountain Reservation in the early morning of December 11.
According to the FBI, the child was killed in a shooting that was targeted at a home, but authorities have not released any information about what happened. Hight’s arrest warrant is sealed.
Law enforcement officials had been looking for Hight in the Oljato area since Saturday, December 21, with a $10,000 reward offered for information leading to his arrest.
He was taken into federal custody without incident.
Hight was described as having brown hair and brown eyes. He stands 6 feet tall and weighs 400 pounds.
He has tattoos on his right leg, left arm, right shoulder, neck, and left shoulder, as well as a pierced left ear and a scar across his chest.
According to the FBI, Hight has ties to Monument Valley in the Four Corners region.
Following the shooting, tribal chairman Manuel Heart issued a video message calling it “senseless” and urging people to let authorities investigate rather than retaliating on their own.
Heart also stated that he was working on a resolution requesting that the federal government hire more police officers for the reservation, as well as another that would prohibit shooting in either of the reservation’s two communities, Towaoc and White Mesa, Utah.
“We are not going to have any more of these type of events where somebody gets shot,” according to him.