Cops Search Guatemala For Gunmen

Hundreds of police searched the Guatemalan countryside Thursday for gunmen who attacked and robbed a minibus of American tourists, killing a man from Utah.

Police set up roadblocks, but "there still is no one captured," police spokesman Faustino Sanchez said.

Thirteen members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were headed from the mountain city of Quetzaltenango to the Mexican border on Wednesday when five men with automatic weapons intercepted their bus about 120 miles west of the capital.

Most of the tourists were from Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah.

Survivors told police the gunmen opened fire to halt the bus, wounding the driver and killing Brett Richards, 52, an architect from Ogden who died en route to a hospital.

The other passengers were forced to lie face-down while their belongings were stolen.

"It seemed like about a month," said Richards' cousin, Ed Allen, who spoke to The Salt Lake Tribune from his hotel Wednesday night. "Most of us felt like we were going to be murdered."

He said the organizer of the tour, Joseph Allen, was kicked in the face several times, but he seemed to be "doing OK."

The director-general of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Guatemala, Andres Ramos, said there was no evidence the attack was religiously motivated. "We were not the object of an attack as a church," he said, adding the motive was robbery.

The spokeswoman for the Guatemalan Tourism Institute, Ester Brol, said she feared "this event is going to affect the tourist activity of the country again." Tourism is one of Guatemala's largest industries.

The tourists reportedly were traveling to Guatemala City after most spent the night with local members of the church in Retalhuleu, some 25 miles from the site of the attack.

The president of the church there, Sergio Maldonado, said the survivors "seem more relaxed, although a little frightened," on Thursday.

Police said the group was on a vacation, not a formal religious mission.

Many Mormons believe archaeological ruins in Central America were built by people described in the Book of Mormon, which church founder Joseph Smith said he translated from a set of golden plates.

Family friend Mark DeCaria told the Standard-Examiner in Ogden that Richards and his family often visited Guatemala because his father's wife is from the country.

Also on the tour were Brett Richards' brother, Reed Richards, a former chief deputy Utah attorney general.

Richards was a partner in Richards Bott Architects P.C., and had served previously as a bishop, the lay leader of a Mormon congregation.

"We're just all numb," Bernie Allen said. "He is just one of the neatest guys you could be around."

It was the first murder of a U.S. citizen in Guatemala since July 2002, but 10 Americans were killed over the three previous years.

In July, armed men attacked a tourist bus in Solola, some 90 miles west of Guatemala City, and stole jewelry and money from the nine foreigners aboard.

In another July attack, robbers blocked a highway near the Mexican border to rob a busload of tourists.

A Japanese tourist was killed in a riot in May 2000 when his tour bus with darkened windows drove into a town where rumors had spread that Satan worshippers from abroad planned to kidnap children.