Ogden Police Dept.

Charles Richard Jennings is accused of shooting a man who was attending church in Utah on Sunday.

A Utah man was critically injured Sunday after he was shot in the back of the head while attending Mass.

Police in Ogden, Utah, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, say Charles Richard Jennings, 35, entered  St. James Catholic Church and confronted the victim before shooting him. 

Authorities believe Jennings then pulled out a gun in the church and fired at the man, whose name has not yet been released. The victim was transported to a nearby hospital where he remained in critical condition Sunday evening.

Ogden police said in a statement that, "The suspect was specific in the desired target and action," and no one else was hurt during the altercation.

Jennings was at large earlier in the day before he was captured, following a search operation that involved authorities throughout the state.

NBC's Salt Lake City affiliate KSL-TV reported that parishioners dove under pews when they heard the gunshot.  

Police said the alleged shooter is related to the victim through marriage, according to KSL.

Rick Bowmer / AP

Members of the Mormons Building Bridges march during the Utah Gay Pride Parade Sunday, June 2, 2013, in Salt Lake City. Kenji Mikesell, second from right, is an 18-year-old Eagle Scout still active in his troop that is sponsored by the Mormon church. He decided to wear his uniform though an area Boy Scouts' official said Scouts and adults with the program were not permitted to do so. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Boy Scouts and adult volunteers wore their uniforms Sunday as they marched in Utah's gay pride parade — defying a leader of the youth organization who had said they couldn't do so under the organization's guidelines prohibiting advocating political or social positions.

The Utah Pride Festival Parade came a little more than a week after national delegates of the Boy Scouts of America approved allowing gay youth to join, ending controversial membership guidelines that had in recent years dogged one of the nation's most popular organizations for children and teens.

"It just feels like the right thing to do," Kenji Mikesell, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout and high school senior still active with his troop, said before leaving for the parade in Salt Lake City in his uniform.

"It's kind of a way of saying we want you here,” added Mikesell, who marched with Mormons Building Bridges and whose troop is chartered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Scouting has been a very positive influence in my life, and I'd like to see more people take advantage of it now that the ban has been lifted.”

Peter Brownstein, a Scoutmaster in Salt Lake City who helped organize the Boy Scouts participation in the march, said a few adults and youth marched at the front of the parade in uniform, including a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout and his stepdad, an Eagle Scout, who borrowed a uniform to wear, and an Asst. Scoutmaster.

But a local leader of the Boy Scouts had said Friday that they were prohibited from doing so. 

"We as a Scouting movement do not advocate any social or political position, so I reminded Mr. Brownstein that we do not wear uniforms at an event like this," said Rick Barnes, chief scout executive of the Great Salt Lake Council, which consists of more than 75,000 youth. "We do not, as Boy Scouts, show support for any social or political position. We're neutral. If he wants to attend the parade and others do that are Scouts or Scouters, they're welcome to do so as private citizens wearing whatever they want except their uniform.

“That's our official position. It always has been, there's nothing new here," he added. "We just don't want people to use the Boy Scouts to advocate their positions."

It wasn't clear what the consequences of wearing their uniforms would be. 

In a statement, Deron Smith, a spokesman for the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America, said it was up to the local council to determine any punishment.

"These individuals stated a personal opinion and do not represent Scouting," said Smith. "Scouting teaches young people that often in life one finds rules they don’t agree with, but a Scout is to be obedient. To simply disobey a rule because you disagree with it is not an example to set for youth. It is up to each council to determine how best to hold their leaders to the standards of Scouting.  We will support the Greater Salt Lake Area Council as they determine the appropriate response."

Barnes said Sunday he had nothing to add to the statement from Smith. On Friday, he said he expected the group to comply, citing the part of the Scout Oath that says a Scout is trustworthy.

Mikesell said he wasn't worried about any consequences. But Brownstein did not wear his uniform and instead opted for a T-shirt that carried the message of inclusive Scouting, with a rainbow square knot on it. His son, an Eagle Scout, and another Scout wore shirts promoting allowing gays in Scouting (LGBT adults are not allowed to join the program).

Brownstein, 53, said it was a disappointment that he couldn't wear his uniform.

"We're just trying to demonstrate that Scouts can be a part of all parts of society, all parts of life," he said before the parade. "While I am not wearing my uniform, other people will be. And this is not about me, this is about getting the message out to America" of "inclusiveness in Scouting, the need for equality."

After the march, he noted: “It felt awesome to proudly represent an organization that is making progress towards change and acceptance … and slowly making progress on opening their organization to many more people who can benefit from the wonderful program."

"And the progress forward will continue,” he added.

Scouts for Equality, a group that campaigns for the LGBT community to be welcomed in Scouting, had said that members of the Boy Scouts have previously marched in pride parades elsewhere. But they called for youth and adults in the Utah Scouting program to abide by Barnes' call and not wear their formal uniforms in the parade.

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the change in the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related stories:

• After vote allowing gay kids to become Boy Scouts, some families call it quits
• Bittersweet victory for gay adults kicked out of Scouting
• Boy Scouts vote to lift ban on gay youth

A 15-year-old in Utah was arrested Thursday in the deaths of his two younger brothers, ages 4 and 10, police said.

Authorities are treating the case as a double homicide, NBC affiliate KSL reported.

The victims are said to have suffered injuries "consistent with penetrating knife wounds," Davis County Sheriff Todd Richardson told KSL.

"As a result of our investigation, this morning we have taken the 15-year-old juvenile into custody," Sergeant Susan Poulsen of the Sheriff's Office, adding that prosecutors were expected to formally charge the boy on Monday. "We believe he acted alone."

The boys' mother discovered her 4-year-old son dead on the floor Wednesday afternoon upon returning to her West Point home from a dance recital with her three other children, KSL reported. Police later found the second body.

The 15-year-old, who is not being identified because he is a minor, was found late that night wandering the streets about five miles away. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation and minor injuries, officials said.

According to KSL, the teenager has made headlines before, when he ran away from home in 2011. He was eventually found about four miles away.

Ann Durrwachter, a neighbor whose son attends school with the teenager, told KSL the boy was a "model student."

"From what I understand, he's a model student, from what I've heard. I've never had any complaints about him or his family. I always figured him as model 15-year-old that every mom dreamed of having. He was just carefree almost. He just kind of did his own thing as most boys do."

The boys' father is on active military duty. Four of the couple's children were adopted, including the two victims, The Associated Press reported. The 15-year-old is the couple's biological child.

The gruesome act has left the quiet community in shock.

"West Point is just a quiet area. Not that many people even know it exists," Durrwachter told KSL, adding that the family was kind and loving.

"They were definitely a very positive family," she told KSL. "Sweet, sweet family. Our kids played together. They walked up and down our streets, rode bikes."

The arrest comes amid heightened national attention to violence by children following the high profile stabbing death last month of an 8-year-old California girl, Leila Fowler. Her 12-year-old brother has been charged with second-degree murder in her death.

Reuters contributed to this report

The latest turn in the 2009 disappearance of a Utah mother has led investigators to a farm in Oregon.

Authorities investigating Susan Powell's vanishing will spend a third day at a remote property east of Salem, Ore., that has ties to the Powell family, the Associated Press reported.

Chuck Cox, Susan Powell's father, confirmed to local NBC affiliate KSL that he told police the farm was a place Susan's husband Josh Powell spent a lot of time. Police searched the area, but found no evidence of remains, according to Cox.

Josh Powell had long been a person of interest in the case of Susan Powell, who vanished in December 2009. Josh Powell blew up his Washington residence on Feb. 5, 2012, killing himself and the couple's two young children. 

Josh Powell was never charged in his wife's disappearance, but unsealed police documents say authorities found Susan Powell's blood in the couple's Utah home. Investigators also found life insurance policies on Susan Powell and determined that Josh Powell had filed paperwork to withdraw her retirement account money about 10 days after her disappearance.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Rick Bowmer / AP file

Jose Lopez, points to a undated photo of Riccardo Portillo, center, his brother-in-law, following a news conference Thursday, May 2, 2013, at Intermountain Medical Center, in Murray, Utah.

A 17-year-old boy accused of delivering a fatal punch to a soccer referee after being penalized during a game in Utah was charged with homicide by assault on Wednesday.

Though the teen was charged in a juvenile court, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a statement that his office will seek to prosecute him as an adult. The teen was not named in the formal charges.

The third-degree felony carries a lesser charge than manslaughter, with a sentence of up to five years in prison for adults.

"We did not believe we could demonstrate the premeditation or intent to justify those charges," Gill told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Those other charges require another type of mental state. We did not believe that type of mental state was present."

Ricardo Portillo, 46, was refereeing a youth soccer match near Salt Lake City when he called a penalty against the goalie. He issued the teen a yellow card, and the player retaliated by punching Portillo in the jaw, NBC's Salt Lake City affiliate KSL reports.

Portillo died after being in a week-long coma. Court records obtained by KSL state that an autopsy revealed his death was "a result of injuries related to the blow to his head."

The teen has remained in juvenile detention since the April 27 attack. He is five months shy of his 18th birthday.

A juvenile court judge will decide if the suspect will be tried as an adult. He is currently being held on $100,000 bail.

Funeral services for Portillo, who leaves behind three daughters and four grandchildren, were set for Wednesday.

Tim Sharp/Reuters file

A statue of a Scout stands at the entrance to the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas.

The Boy Scouts of America said Monday that the Utah Pride Center — a LGBT advocacy group — could not charter a troop, even though the group said it would comply with the youth organization's controversial policy banning gay Scouts and leaders.

The Utah Pride Center submitted its application in late February to sponsor a troop with heterosexual leaders and middle-school age boys several weeks ago, said Valerie Larabee, the center's executive director. She said the bid, which comes ahead of the BSA vote in May on whether it should keep the ban, was not a stunt.

"We feel great concern for youth that may be involved in Scouting right now that are hiding something and we don’t ask our kids when they come to our campus here whether they are gay, straight or anything else," she told NBC News by phone. "We assume that they're here because they think this is a safe place and as a safe place we think that we can offer an incredible opportunity to young people who want to be involved in BSA."

Larabee said they submitted their application to Rick Barnes, the chief executive officer of the Great Salt Lake Council. Barnes referred questions to the BSA headquarters, "since this was a national decision."

When contacted for comment on who had reviewed the application and why it was rejected, the BSA said in a two-sentence statement: "The BSA is engaged in an internal discussion about its membership standards policy and is working to stay focused on Scouting’s mission. Based on the mission of this organization [the Utah Pride Center] we do not believe a chartered partner relationship is beneficial to Scouting.”

Larabee said she knew their file was passed higher within the BSA, but did not know if it reached the national headquarters and said they'd had no response from the organization -- just that their application had been returned without remarks on March 4. The center took it as a denial.

"We are disappointed," she said. "It's almost like they don't even want to acknowledge that we even applied. It's like they just want us to go away." 

A call placed to a Boy Scout leader who The Salt Lake Tribune said would lead the new troop committee, Nile Eatmon, was not immediately returned. Eatmon, a member of the Great Salt Lake Council's executive board, told the newspaper that he didn't see a problem with the center hosting a troop.

"I was surprised. I thought the Pride Center application complied with the Boy Scouts’ policies," Eatmon said. "All the adult members and youth that were submitted with the application were straight."

Faith-based organizations, civic and educational groups often charter Boy Scout units, providing meeting facilities and leadership among other things. More than 70 percent of the Scouting unit in 2012 were chartered to faith-based organizations, and Larabee believed their application may be a first by a LGBT group, although the BSA did not respond to a question about that.

Related: Can a gay Boy Scout share a tent with another boy? Boy Scouts survey members on anti-gay policy

The BSA announced in late January that it may ditch the national policy banning gays, instead leaving that up to local sponsoring organizations to decide. It then pushed back a decision on the policy to May, when some 1,400 members of Scouting's National Council will vote on a resolution that Boy Scouts' officers are crafting.

The membership guidelines have roiled the organization in recent years.

Last July, the BSA said it was sticking with the ban following a confidential two-year review of the policy. That review was announced months after Jennifer Tyrrell was dismissed from her post as leader of her son’s Tiger Cubs den because she is a lesbian, and a few months before California teen Ryan Andresen was denied his Eagle award because he is gay.

Both cases made national headlines for several weeks, and led a few hundred Eagle Scouts to turn in their hard-earned regalia in protest of the ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2000.

If you are a current or former member of the Boy Scouts and would like to share your thoughts on how your troop, pack or council is handling the BSA's upcoming decision on the membership policy, you can email the reporter at miranda.leitsinger@msnbc.com. We may use some comments for a follow-up story, so please specify if your remarks can be used and provide your name, hometown, age, Boy Scout affiliation and a phone number.

Related stories: 

Boy Scouts: We need more time for decision on gay Scouts

After years of heartache, gay Scouts and supporters react warily over proposal to lift ban

'Gravely distressed': Religion looms large over Boy Scouts decision on gays 

'BATTLESTATIONS!': Call-in war waged over Boy Scouts' ban on gays

Scott Smith

Corona Arch near Moab, Utah. The arch has become popular for adrenaline junkies seeking a thrill by swinging through the 140-foot sandstone arch.

A 22-year-old man recreating what has become a popular stunt was killed after apparently leaving too much slack in the rope he was using to swing through a sandstone arch in Utah, police said Monday. 

Kyle Lee Stocking, of West Jordan, and five friends hiked to the Corona Arch in southeastern Utah on Sunday to attempt the stunt made famous on YouTube.

But Stocking miscalculated the length of the rope he used to swing from the 140-foot sandstone arch and struck the ground when he jumped, according to the Grand County Sheriff's Office.

County deputies, search and rescue personnel, and paramedics all responded to the accident, but Stocking was pronounced dead at the scene.

Internet videos have popularized the dangerous activity, which involves using a rope to swing like a pendulum through arches and canyons. A YouTube video titled "World's Largest Rope Swing," shot at the same arch where Stocking attempted his swing,  has garnered more than 17 million views since being posted last month.

By Monday night, the comments page attached to the video had largely turned into a debate about the safety of the activity and the wisdom of bolstering it through a well-produced video.

Previously, hiking and adventure companies could charge to take daring patrons to the top of the arch for their chance to get the swing of a lifetime, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

But earlier this year Utah state officials outlawed the activity, largely because of the danger posed — and a forthcoming land exchange between the state's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) and the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The arch has nevertheless remained open for private parties wishing to climb or swing. 

"If people want to huck themselves off a cliff or arch, that’s their business," John Andrews, SITLA’s general counsel, told the Tribune in February. "There is a general principle that owners who hold their land open for recreational use are insulated from liability. We felt there was more risk [exposure to the state] if someone operated under a permit and someone got hurt."

Yet prohibiting commercial outfitters from professionally charging for swinging adventures has raised objections from those who say people will swing regardless, so it would be better to do it with some professional oversight.

"If you don’t do it exactly right, you can die," Thad James, owner of the Utah outfitter High Adventure, told the Tribune when the ban first went into effect.

A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management told the Associated Press on Monday the agency will be  "taking a closer look at appropriate ways to balance and manage these activities on public lands."

SALT LAKE CITY - A miner was killed and another injured on Friday when part of a tunnel roof collapsed at a coal mine in central Utah, authorities said.

The miner was killed in the cave-in at the Rhino mine in Bear Canyon, 10 miles from Huntington in central Utah, which was reported shortly after 3 p.m. local time, the Emery County Sheriff's Office said.

Rescue workers recovered one injured miner at the site, who was taken to the Castleview Hospital in Price, Utah, for treatment, Sheriff's office spokeswoman Molly Barnes said.

"Members of the Rhino mine rescue team have recovered the body of the second coal miner," Barnes said. She said his identity would not be released until his family had been informed.

The Rhino mine is part of the Castle Valley Mining Complex, according to news reports. A call to Rhino Resource Partners, which owns the operation in Emery and Carbon Counties, Utah, was not returned.

The mine is just a few miles from a coal mine at Crandall Canyon, Utah, where a collapse in August 2007 trapped and killed six workers 1,800 feet underground in a cave-in so powerful that it caused a magnitude 3.9 seismic waves.

Three rescue workers were killed in a second collapse ten days after the initial disaster.

Joe Piccolo, the mayor of the nearby mining town of Price, where the injured miner was taken for treatment, said local communities in the Utah coal belt had "always sustained themselves through grief stricken situations."

"It's a dangerous occupation, but we will pull together," he told Reuters.

Barnes could not confirm the condition of the injured miner. Piccolo said he had been treated and released from hospital.

Related:

Workers rescued from mile-deep Idaho mine

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office

Michael Conder and Carrol Lee Leazer

A Utah couple claimed they swallowed razor blades hidden inside store-bought doughnuts, but police say their story had a hole in it — the couple planted them.

The couple, identified by authorities as Michael Condor, 35, and Carrol Lee Leazer, 39, were arrested Monday. Among the charges was aggravated assault because the couple let one of their co-workers at a Dollar Tree store bite into one of the doughnuts, police said.

Police got a call last week from someone who reported finding a triangular piece of sharp metal in a doughnut purchased from Smith’s Food Store in the city of Draper, outside Salt Lake City.

Hospital X-rays showed several razor blade pieces the size of fingernails in the couple’s stomachs, police said. But as detectives looked into it, “things weren’t adding up,” Draper police Sgt. Chad Carpenter told NBC affiliate KSL in Salt Lake City.

Investigators told the Deseret News newspaper that the couple were trying to win a settlement from the store. The couple were in debt, the newspaper reported, citing a police statement.

The co-worker bit into the suspect doughnut but did not swallow it and was unhurt, Carpenter said. The co-worker is the one who reported the metal to police, Carpenter told KSL.

Smith’s initially pulled that brand of doughnut off its shelves.

“Those doughnuts were actually manufactured out of state and sent to that store in sealed, tamper-proof packaging,” Marsha Gilford, a spokeswoman for the grocery store, told the newspaper.