Suspect detained in Colorado in the case of 3 women found dead in Utah

TORREY, Utah (AP) — A man who authorities accuse of killing a southern Utah woman, stealing her vehicle and driving it to a nearby trailhead and killing two women who were hiking together before fleeing in one of their vehicles has been arrested, officials announced Thursday.

The series of events happened late Wednesday afternoon in small ranching and farming communities that bustle with tourists in the summer because of the proximity to national parks.

Authorities were alerted to the killings by the husbands of the hikers who went to the trail near Capitol Reef National Park looking for them, said Lt. Cameron Roden of the Utah Highway Patrol. The husbands told authorities one vehicle was missing from the trailhead, and they didn't know who owned the other.

Authorities were combing the site Thursday that is partially shielded from a paved road by piñon and juniper trees, and other vegetation. The trail used mostly by locals winds through rock formations.

Roden said authorities discovered the first woman who was killed after identifying the owner of the vehicle. Police tape surrounded the brick home in Lyman on Thursday while investigators gathered evidence. Down the road nearby, the authorities were combing through an area nestled in pinon trees.

Authorities used license plate readers and vehicle tracking services to follow his path, from Utah through northern Arizona and into the mountain town of Pagosa Springs in southwestern Colorado where he abandoned the stolen vehicle, Roden said. The suspect was found after a short search, he said.

Roden identified the suspect as Ivan Miller, 22, of Blakesburg, Iowa. According to online jail records, Miller was being held on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. He was scheduled to make his first appearance in a Colorado court Friday afternoon.

Miller is being represented by the Colorado Public Defender’s office, said Justin Bogan, who heads the office in the judicial district that covers Pagosa Springs. Bogan declined to comment further. Voicemail messages left at listings for possible relatives of Miller were not immediately returned on Thursday.

There is no indication that Miller had any connection to the victims, Roden said. Investigators were still looking into when he arrived in Utah and what he was doing prior to the killings, Roden said.

Officials have not identified the hikers who were friends but said they were in their 30s and 60s, and the other woman in her 80s. The hikers had no connection to the other woman who lived in a home in Wayne County about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the trail, officials said.

Investigators haven’t found a motive for the killings yet and don’t believe the suspect targeted the women for any other reason other than just “convenience”, Roden said.

Before the suspect was taken into custody, residents in Wayne County were asked to remain vigilant and schools nearby were closed Thursday. Officials asked for help finding a white Subaru Outback but warned people not to approach it.

The State Bureau of Investigation and Crime Lab were supporting the homicide investigation, and multiple scenes were being processed in Torrey, Utah, and the surrounding area, Roden said.

Slevin reported from Denver and Brumfield from Cockeysville, Maryland.

This undated image released by the Pagosa Springs, Colo., Police Department on Thursday, March 5, 2026, shows Ivan Miller. (Pagosa Springs Police Department via AP)

Authorities conduct an investigation at a home where a woman was found dead in Lyman, Utah, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Authorities conduct an investigation, Thursday, March 5, 2026, into the deaths of two women a day earlier on a trail just west of Capitol Reef National Park near Teasdale, Utah. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Authorities conduct an investigation Thursday, March 5, 2026, into the deaths of two women a day earlier on a trail just west of Capitol Reef National Park near Teasdale, Utah. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Police and investigators conduct an investigation at a home where a woman was found dead in Lyman, Utah, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/George Frey)

A view of Loa and Lyman Utah on Thursday, March 5, 2026, where three woman were found dead on Wednesday. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Authorities conduct an investigation at a home where a woman was found dead in Lyman, Utah, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Crime tape surrounds a home where a woman was found dead in Lyman, Utah, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/George Frey)

Authorities conduct an investigation at a home where a woman was found dead in Lyman, Utah, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/George Frey)

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched a series of strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut Thursday after ordering all residents of the densely populated area to evacuate.

Traffic was gridlocked in Lebanon 's capital on Thursday as panicked residents tried to flee after Israel's military issued an evacuation notice telling residents to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately,” and specified which routes they should take to escape.

Hours later, strikes began to hit the Beirut suburbs.

Since the resurgence of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, Israel has struck sites in Beirut’s suburbs and issued a blanket warning for residents south of the Litani River — an area in southern Lebanon stretching to the border with Israel — to evacuate their homes, but had not previously issued a blanket evacuation order for Beirut’s southern suburbs.

After the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran triggered a new war in the Middle East, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones into Israel on Monday for the first time in over a year, and Israel has retaliated with bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The conflict had claimed 123 lives and forced the displacement of more than 83,000 people in Lebanon before Thursday's evacuation order.

Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich warned Thursday that the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence will look like Khan Younis, a city in Gaza that Israel has decimated during the war triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel.

“You wanted to bring hell on us, we are bringing hell on you,” Smotrich said as he toured towns on Israel’s border with Lebanon. “Dahiyeh will look like Khan Younis, and our citizens of the north will live in peace and quiet.”

The evacuation order rattled Lebanese authorities, with President Joseph Aoun calling his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in an urgent bid to halt the anticipated widespread strikes, according to a statement from his office.

Macron issued a statement calling for an end to the conflict and announcing that Paris will send aid to Lebanon, in the first apparent diplomatic endeavor to end the boiling conflict.

“Hezbollah must immediately cease its fire toward Israel. Israel must refrain from any ground intervention or large-scale operation on Lebanese territory,” the French president said in a post on X, adding that he has communicated with U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanon's top political leadership.

He called on the militant group to disarm and said he supports Beirut's endeavors to deploy the military to assert full control over the country's territory.

Hadi Kaakour, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs who was fleeing said he is not sure that even after leaving he will be safe.

“We don’t put anything past them (Israel), they will strike us no matter where we go,” he said.

Others expressed frustration at Lebanon being pulled into the larger war in the Middle East.

“We got sucked into a mess that we have nothing to do with,” said Yousef Nabulsi, another fleeing resident. “People have been displaced and are now staying on the streets, and this is wrong.”

U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have seen and heard clashes in the area as more Israeli forces have moved across the border, a spokesperson for the peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL said Thursday. It was the first confirmation of combat taking place.

“Ground combat was observed west of Kfar Kila,” a village near the border with Israel, overnight, which included “firing of shots,” UNIFIL spokesperson Tilak Pokharel said. In Khiyam, a town about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the border with Israel, he said peacekeepers saw “air attacks and flares and heard explosions.”

On Tuesday, Israel said it sent additional troops into southern Lebanon. Israeli forces had already been occupying several border points in Lebanon since a U.S.-brokered November 2024 ceasefire halted the previous Israel-Hezbollah war.

The Lebanese army has pulled back from the border as the Israeli troops moved in, while Hezbollah has issued a series of statements announcing attacks on Israeli troops attempting to advance. The Iran-backed militant group also published a video showing a tank being struck by a missile.

The Israeli army on Wednesday said two of its soldiers were wounded by anti-tank fire in Lebanon and on Thursday said two more were evacuated after being wounded in a battle in southern Lebanon.

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Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

A giant poster shows the late Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, while workers check a destroyed building that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

A man removes clothes from his damaged shop at a commercial street that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

A giant poster shows the late Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, while workers check a destroyed building that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Cars sit in traffic as residents flee Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Smoke rises following Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Hezbollah members walk past a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)