Todd Tix was taken into custody near the Yentna River after an Alaska State Trooper in an airplane spotted him on a lone snowmachine racing north into the wilderness, more than 75 miles from where police say he shot and killed his onetime friend Terry Tumbleson on Monday night.
Troopers had a tip from a Yentna River lodge owner, who told them he saw Tix on Wednesday morning. The owner told Tix to leave but had his 17-year-old son poised with a shotgun, out of view from Tix, in case the fugitive started trouble. "I'm not going to take no crap," said Dan Gabryszak, owner of the Yentna Station Roadhouse. "If he had done anything, my kid would have blown him away. What are you going to do?"
After the spotting, a trooper in a single-engine plane located Tix and followed him for an hour while two troopers loaded into a helicopter at Fort Richardson, Anchorage police and troopers said. At one point, when Tix realized he was being followed, he drove into a tree line, apparently in an effort to get out of sight, troopers said.
When the helicopter got to the river, it swooped in on Tix in the Yentna Fish Lake Creek area. Then officers trudged through thigh-high snow in snowshoes for the length of five football fields before sneaking up on the fugitive, who was hiding under a tree, and handcuffing him. There was no resistance, authorities said.
