Task force tracks down Valley fugitive in Colorado

By ANDREW WELLNER

Frontiersman.com

DEL NORTE, Colo. — A Wasilla man was arrested in Colorado Tuesday on an Alaska warrant for felony assault.

U.S. Marshals say Michael Eugene Tidwell, 62, was residing in Del Norte, Colo. An Alaska warrant was issued for his arrest Sept. 27 and the warrant was served at 11 a.m., Oct. 22 in Colorado. The U.S. Marshals Service describes the Alaska State Troopers’ investigation leading up to Tidwell’s arrest as “lengthy,” but deferred questions about the charges troopers.

“The best I can do is tell you that he allegedly intentionally burned his wife last year,” AST spokeswoman Megan Peters wrote in an email Tuesday morning. She deferred further questions to court documents filed in the case.

Court documents shed little light on the events leading up to the charges. They indicate that the alleged burning happened in April 2012. Two months later, Tidwell’s wife filed a protective order against him in Anchorage.

She was called as a witness to testify against him before the grand jury that chose on Sept. 27 to charge him with the crime. The rest of the witness list includes a records custodian at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, other family members and the investigating trooper.

According to court records, Tidwell is charged with the most serious assault count available, first-degree assault. His bail was set at $100,000 and he will need to find a third party to watch him before he can be released.

The team that ran him to ground was the Alaska Fugitive Task Force, which Marshals say is comprised of officers from the AST, the U.S. Marshals Service, Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“The objective of the task force is to seek out and arrest violent offenders with outstanding federal and state warrants,” according to the marshals’ press release.

Tidwell’s criminal history in Alaska includes only the current assault case.