A Tooele man has admitted he fatally shot 20-year-old Joshua Belen during a botched robbery in October 2017 in the parking lot of the Olympic Oval in Kearns, police said Friday.
The 19-year-old suspect, who already was awaiting trial on robbery and assault charges in two separate cases this year, told investigators that he and several others had planned to rob Belen, Unified Police wrote in a news statement.
“The robbery went poorly, and [the suspect] shot the victim,” police wrote.
The Tribune is not identifying the suspect because he had not been charged as of Friday afternoon.
The man confessed to gang investigators while awaiting trial in two other cases, according to court records.
In charging documents, police wrote that the man admitted to a November attack in which he and several others chased down a victim at a West Jordan apartment building and beat him with a baseball bat.
“They continued to beat the victim for some time” and then took his shoes and some other property, police wrote. The victim was found “bleeding profusely from the head” and was taken to a hospital for treatment. The suspect was charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated assault resulting in serious bodily injury, both first-degree felonies.
The suspect also is accused of joining two others in an August attack on a group of teenagers in a car outside of a West Jordan McDonald’s. The suspect smashed the rear window of the car with a rock and tried to pull a 17-year-old girl out of the car, shutting the door on her legs and cutting her in the process, prosecutors wrote. The other men punched the two boys in the car, stole the shoes off one of the boys, and threatened the teens with a handgun, prosecutors wrote. The teens eventually fled in the car.
The suspect in Belen’s death was charged with first-degree felony aggravated robbery, two second-degree felony counts of aggravated assault and misdemeanor criminal mischief in that case.
