A local Wendover businesswoman, Rattana Keomanivong is being hailed as a hero who by fighting back and thwarting an attempted car jacking played a key role in ending a murderous cross country crime spree by a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.
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Keomanivong had no idea that the young couple who initially stopped her as she left the Red Garter early Saturday morning had already committed two murders hours before.
In fact no one knew that Ann Fullwood, aged 69, and her husband Woody, aged 70, were even dead in their Mt. Pleasant home.
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All Rattana knew was the two guns pointing in her face were real and that the man and woman, Angela Hill and Logan McFarland, behind them looked ready to use them.
For their part, the killers must have thought their luck was holding when they first saw Keomanivong, Asian and standing less than 5’1” tall and tipping the scales at barely 115 lbs., the Wendover woman probably appeared to be the perfect victim, a submissive sheep ready for slaughter.
The couple felt so confident that their newest victim would not put up a fight that it was the woman Hill who accompanied Ranatta in her car while McFarland followed behind in the couples’ stolen car. Hill even drove the car.
Big mistakes.
What they soon discovered that on that slight frame were steel bands of pure muscle and far from being a sheep, Keomanivong had the heart of a tigress. The owner of the local gym Animal House, Keomanivong won the Wendover Strongest woman contest this summer.
As soon as the odds evened with only Hill and Keomanivong in the car, Keomanivong attacked her car jacker by “biting her ear, neck and forcing her from the vehicle,”. Rattana took the offense despite Hill pointing her gun not six inches from Rattan’s face. During Rattana’s fight for life, Hill fired a shot at the woman as she drove away, according to the police report.
Keomanivong was struck in the back of the head, but she was able to drive herself to the police station and give police a description of the two before she was airlifted to Salt Lake for emergency surgery. She is doing well after surgery and should be home within the week.
Thwarted in their attempt to steal Keomanivong’s vehicle the couple sped off west bound on I-80. Their stolen Saturn was found abandoned in Wells.
If Keomanivong had not fought back and won, police speculate it could have been hours if not days before the two slipped up again.
“They had already established a pattern of attacking helpless people, robbing them, stealing their vehicles and killing them before anyone knew what was happening” said one detective. “If not for Mrs. Keomanivong they could have been well on their way to Reno or San Francisco with a trail of dead bodies behind them.”
Instead Keomanivong thanks to her strength and courage turned the hunters into the hunted, hiding in a hole near Wells until they were captured.
Rattana’s bravery has not gone unnoticed by the national media. Not four days after the incident still recovering from her gun shot room, she is being bombarded by calls from virtually every major television network to make a personal appearance on the whole spectrum of news/entertainment morning shows from “Good Morning America” to “Today”. Hard news programs such as “World News Tonight” are also interested in interviewing the woman who not only saved who own life by fighting back but probably saved countless others.
