Video footage released Monday shows an Ogden police officer shoot and injure an 18-year-old man who had a kitchen knife in one hand and an airsoft gun pointed at an officer in the other.
That officer shot Gavin Johansen after police were called to his family’s home shortly after 7 p.m. on Oct. 27 by a caseworker who told dispatchers that the teen was threatening to commit suicide.
The case worker told the dispatcher that Johansen’s girlfriend had texted his mother, saying that he said goodbye and was planning to go to their home near the 800 block of Fifth Street to kill himself with a shotgun.
When officers arrived, they set up a “perimeter,” according to police officials. While police were talking to someone at the front door, body camera footage released by the Weber County Attorney’s Office shows Johansen exit a basement door with an airsoft gun in one hand and a large knife in the other.
Four seconds pass between when an officer begins to yell, “Hey!” several times and she shoots her gun five times.
Johansen was struck in the abdomen.
The video shows the man crying in the stairwell, asking officers, “Am I going to die?” as they pull him off the stairs.
Johansen was hospitalized after the shooting, but he has since been transferred to the Weber County jail after prosecutors charged him with assault against a police officer, possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person and aggravated assault.
The Weber County Attorney’s Office is now reviewing the case, and will determine whether the officer’s use of force was legally justified.
Johansen was the fifth person in Weber County to be shot by police this year.
