Four men accused of a vicious rape. A victim who is just 9 years old. And a mother who had left her alone so she could smoke methamphetamine nearby.

As the police described the case of a rape at a northeastern Utah home, its horrifying details have shaken the small city where the attack unfolded and have reverberated far beyond, with some even calling for vigilante justice.

According to the Uintah County Sheriff’s Department, the girl had fallen asleep on a couch at the house of her mother’s friend on March 27 in Vernal, a city of about 9,000 people about 170 miles from Salt Lake City. As the girl’s mother was in the garage smoking drugs, four men at the house took the girl into another room and raped her, the authorities said.

In the days that followed, Larson RonDeau, 36; Josiah RonDeau, 20; Jerry Flatlip, 29; and Randall Flatlip, 26, were arrested one by one and locked up in the county jail.