SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah authorities say a sex offender parolee who killed a University of Utah student had been lurking on campus for days trying to confront the woman who had broken up with him weeks earlier when she discovered his criminal background.
University police chief Dale Brophy said Thursday that Melvin Rowland spent the hours before the fatal shooting Monday in victim Lauren McCluskey's dorm building socializing with her friends.
Brophy says Rowland confronted the 21-year-old McCluskey in the parking lot, dragged her into a car and shot her multiple times in the back seat.
Brophy says Rowland was picked up on campus after the shooting by a woman he met online.
They went to dinner, visited the state Capitol and went to her apartment. Later that night. after she dropped him off, police tracked Rowland into a church where he killed himself.
Brophy says McCluskey had filed a complaint with campus police weeks earlier alleging that Rowland had demanded money in exchange for not posting compromising pictures of the couple online.
Brophy called Rowland a master manipulator.
