A Utah man who reportedly tried to shoot police officers and was shot at in return has been charged with half a dozen felonies. No one was wounded.
The Davis County Sheriff’s Office released body cam footage that shows Zachary T. Mendelkow, 35, pointing a handgun at deputies, who fired their weapons at him. Mendelkow fell to the ground and deputies believed he had been hit; he had not.
The footage also shows Mendelkow trying to pull the trigger on his gun several times to shoot the officers; the gun did not fire. According to police, his weapon was loaded with five live rounds.
On the morning of Feb. 25, Davis County Sheriff's deputies were called to a home in West Point where Mendelkow — who was wanted for violating his parole — was “sleeping in a trailer home and was not welcome to be there,” according to a probable cause statement. Mendelkow approached the deputies and “removed his right hand from his coat pocket, holding a revolver. He immediately raised the revolver and pointed it at [an officer's] face, still in very close proximity to the officer” as he repeatedly tried to pull the trigger.
After firing at and missing him, officers handcuffed Mendelkow, who was “belligerent, uttering expletives at and about the police while on the ground,” according to the probable cause statement. When deputies told him “he was lucky he was not dead. Mendelkow replied, 'You're lucky you're not!'"
Mendelkow was returned to the Utah State Prison for violating his parole. During that trip, Mendelkow was recording telling another prisoner he “tried to shoot a cop.”
While investigating the shooting, police learned that Mendelkow was a suspect in a kidnapping several hours earlier. According to the probable cause statement, a “young man” who lived in a nearby house was awakened sometime between midnight and 3:30 a.m. by a man with a gun in his bedroom. The suspect took the victim’s phone; “put the gun to the back of [his] head”; and “forced” the victim into his own car.
“Fearful that he or his parents would be killed, [the victim] did not yell out to wake his parents,” according to the probable cause statement.
The suspect — later identified by the victim as Mendelkow — forced the victim to drive him to two stores and a home in Roy as he spoke to a woman on the suspect’s cell phone. A woman — who police identified as Mendelkow’s girlfriend — eventually drove up and picked up the suspect, who left with the victim’s phone. The victim was not injured.
According to the Davis County Sheriff's Office, the kidnapping remains under investigation and others may be charged.
Mendelkow has been charged in 2nd District Court with attempted aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary, all first-degree felonies; and obstructing justice and possession of a firearm by a restricted person, second-degree felonies.
