Officers from four police departments shot at — and in two instances killed — people over the last three days.
The first shooting occurred Friday, after a woman called Ogden police around 7 p.m. to report she was physically and sexual assaulted by a man who had just stolen her car and left. Just before midnight, police found the vehicle near 30th Street and Washington Boulevard, and the driver ran away, Chief Eric Young said at a Sunday news conference. A woman in the car surrendered to police.
Officers tracked the man’s footprints in the snow through a backyard to an open, covered garage and found him in the bed of a truck parked there. The man stood up with a gun in his hands, Young said.
Then, he said, “the suspect refused to comply with commands from the officers. Two Ogden police officers fired their guns.” He said the encounter lasted a matter of seconds.
The man, who Young described as between 20 and 30 years old, died at the scene. He wasn’t from Utah.
The next shooting happened about 20 hours later, approximately 50 miles south in Kearns.
Unified police spokesperson Melody Cutler told reporters Saturday evening that SWAT officers shot and killed a man who fired on them after a standoff at a house near 5900 West and 5700 South. Police haven’t yet released his name.
Cutler said a woman called police around 8 p.m. that night to report her husband was holding a gun to their 15-year-old grandchild’s head, threatening to shoot.
When police arrived, Cutler said, officers heard the man fire two shots inside the house, but the woman and all four children there were unharmed and escaped to a neighbor’s house.
The man then barricaded himself inside the house and police called for a SWAT team. Police asked neighbors to shelter in their homes.
During the standoff, the man went in and out of the house several times, but the last time, Cutler said, he came out and fired at police. A UPD officer and two West Valley City officers returned fire, and the man died.
The next shooting of the weekend took place early Sunday, about 20 miles north in Davis County.
About 4 a.m., a Woods Cross police officer stopped to talk to two people he thought were suspicious; they were parked in the Manheim car auction lot on 500 South, west of the Legacy Parkway, said Chief Chad Soffe.
While talking to the two people, the officer fired several shots. The driver, uninjured, sped away and later crashed into a chainlink fence in a West Valley City neighborhood. Police then arrested the driver and passenger, who surrendered.
Soffe didn’t know why the officer fired at the two men, but said, ”he obviously felt threatened,” and that police found a gun in the vehicle.
A probable cause statement for the arrest of the driver doesn’t mention a handgun, but said the driver had “several knives.”
The two men have been booked into the Davis County jail on suspicion of attempted murder, vehicle theft and other offenses.
All the shootings will be investigated by an outside agency. Centerville is taking the lead on the Woods Cross shooting, Salt Lake City is looking into the Kearns shooting and the Weber County Attorney’s Office is investigating the shooting in Ogden.
The shootings were the first in 2021, after Utah officers shot at a record-tying 30 people in 2020. Last year’s first police shooting happened Jan. 8. There wasn’t another until Feb. 3.
