When Sgt. Dallas Wingate and his K9 partner, Bandit, left Boone to help with a call in Ames on Monday, Wingate thought it was a missing persons case.

The call came in to the Boone County Sheriff’s Department at around 11 a.m. on Monday for a missing person. But shortly after Wingate and K9 Bandit got to the crime scene in Ames, the body of Celia Barquin Arozamena had been discovered at the Coldwater Golf Links Course.

Wingate soon learned that the victim was deceased. It was a homicide and now he and Bandit were looking for an assailant.

“The problem that we had is that when we got the call initially, it was basically a missing person report,” Wingate said. “Unfortunately, in a missing person situation, what we tend to have happen is everyone runs around trying to find the person. So we have a bunch of unorganized, untrained people running around the crime scene trying to find the person.”

This resulted in a crime scene that was contaminated with human scent, making Bandit’s job difficult.

“From a law enforcement perspective, we very rarely have a scent article to use to tell the dog to find this particular person, and that was the case in this particular situation too,” Wingate said.

There were a lot of articles with scent on them, but those things had Arozamena’s scent.

“The only thing I had to go on was that we had an assailant who had fled the scene,” Wingate said.

He had to find a place outside the immediate crime scene for Bandit to try to pick up a scent.

“What we initially started to do was look for evidence,” Wingate said. “We were looking for maybe a knife or some of the victim’s articles of clothing had been taken, so we were looking for things like that outside the area of the initial assault with the hope that if we can find one of these, the thought was that it might be along the flight of the assailant as he’s running away and maybe he’s throwing things or dropping things as he’s going.”

That would provide a potential scent article to locate the suspect.

“In the process of that, we obtained a track on the bicycle trail that led away from the scene toward the north,” Wingate said.

Since the officer didn’t have an article to help Bandit get a scent, Wingate wasn’t certain they were really tracking the suspect. They tracked along the bicycle and walking path until it neared a homeless camp area.

“The track continued into the homeless camping area,” Wingate said. “While we were in the process of getting into that area and searching with the dog, Bandit found a lot of fresh human odor and I found some additional evidence that I believed to be relevant to the case.”

Wingate called detectives from the Ames Police Department to come to the homeless camp and see the evidence they had found. That is when the APD found the suspect, Collin Daniel Richards. He was taken into custody.

The arrest was successful thanks to many law enforcement agents and agencies working together, Wingate said.

“Had we not had that situation of me being there with the dog, the Ames Police coming to that area and the assailant being there at the same time, that confluence of those three things,” he said. “(The suspect) easily could have gotten away and maybe could have dispose of more evidence,” Wingate said.

Being able to track the suspect’s scent allowed law enforcement to quickly identify Richards, arrest him and interview him shortly after the fact. He wouldn’t have time to make up a story or an alibi. He also wouldn’t have additional time to clean up or dispose of evidence.

“We’re trying to use a dog’s abilities to connect suspects back to the scene of a crime directly. It saves a lot of potential hours needed to spend going through DNA, gathering evidence, looking for suspects,” Wingate said. “Having a K9 unit can save your agency and your community time, money and anguish.”

Seven-year-old Bandit is a multi-purpose police service dog trained to locate concealed narcotics, track human scent, locate evidence and other property lost or discarded, apprehend fleeing suspects and provide officer protection.

Bandit’s ability to track and locate fleeing or hidden suspects is highly developed. That ability is used frequently to locate and apprehend suspects who might otherwise escape detection. In 2017, a suspect led several local agencies on a high-speed chase which resulted in the suspect wrecking his vehicle and fleeing into heavy brush in the Fraser area. Bandit was able to track the suspect from the location of the wreck to his place of hiding, under a trailer in a garage. Along the track, several pieces of evidence were located, including the suspect’s pants.

The United States Police Canine Association has given Bandit two Regional awards for tracks and apprehensions during his career. In April, Bandit was also named Patrol Dog of the Year by the USPCA.