Clerk fingers Idaho suspect

WALLACE, Idaho -- The convenience store clerk's suspicions were raised when the scraggly, dirty man wearing camouflage asked for a package of cold hot dogs.

As soon as the man left the store early on Wednesday morning -- empty-handed and having refused her offer of a piping hot 89-cent Ugly Dog -- Sue Boren called 911. Moments later, police arrested John R. Tuggle, a convicted rapist sought in the rugged Idaho mountains for investigation in the near-fatal stabbing of his 12- year-old daughter.

"He seemed antsy to get out of there," Boren said. His unkempt appearance and camouflage clothing sealed it. "It is not hunting season. I thought something was suspicious about him."

Boren, a graveyard shift clerk at the Conoco Super-Stop, was the talk of this historic mining town of about 1,000 residents, where parents and vacationing campers had been on edge in the week since Tuggle was identified as the only suspect in the girl's stabbing.

"We're all real proud of that little girl," Wallace Mayor Ronald Garitone said as reporters waited outside the Shoshone County Courthouse for Tuggle to make an initial court appearance Wednesday.

Sheriff's deputies who frequent her store's coffee bar gave her a sticker in the shape of a badge, but Boren played down talk that she is a hero.

"I feel like I did the right thing that I'm supposed to," she said. "I don't feel like a hero. I'm just glad the guy's locked up now."

Tuggle, 37, looked skittish during his brief time in the gas station store shortly after midnight Wednesday, adding to Boren's suspicions that he was the man on wanted posters around town.

He offered no resistance when officers caught up with him and he was being held in the county jail on a warrant for attempted murder.

"He ate two full plates of food and is resting in solitary," Shoshone County Sheriff Chuck Reynalds said. "He said he had not eaten in three days."

Tuggle had been sought since July 20, when his daughter was stabbed repeatedly and left for dead on the side of a mountain road. She was found hours later by campers who heard her yell. The girl remained in serious condition Wednesday.

The sheriff praised Boren in helping nab Tuggle. The clerk said Tuggle asked for a package of hot dogs, which the store doesn't carry, so she offered him a hot dog from a grill, hoping to get a better look at his face after studying wanted posters.

"As soon as he walked out of the store, and I didn't see a vehicle, I thought I better give the sheriff's office a call," Boren said. "They picked him up a couple blocks away."

Tuggle apparently walked into Wallace from a remote area south of town where his car was found abandoned Sunday, the sheriff said.

An earlier report indicated that Tuggle had told his parents he wanted to live in that region, away from people. "So much for living in the wilds of northern Idaho. Apparently he was not as proficient as he thought he was," Reynalds said.

Tuggle was released from jail last year after serving nine years in an Idaho prison for raping his 14-year-old sister-in-law. He had been staying with a brother in Colorado.

He had not seen his daughter since she was a toddler but showed up last week at the home of his ex-wife in Idaho and said he wanted to take the child shopping.

He was not under state supervision except for the requirement to register as a sex offender, which Colorado officials said he had done.

The girl's name has not been released. Her family released a statement Wednesday thanking law enforcement and the public.

"We have been struggling with why someone would commit such a violent act upon one of their own children or anyone else," the statement said.

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