A Salt Lake City officer who shot and killed a man four years ago — milliseconds after another SWAT officer fired a less-lethal round — will not face charges, the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office announced Friday.
District Attorney Sim Gill said his office asked three outside law enforcement experts to review the 2018 shooting of Delorean Pikyavit and received differing reports: one found firing officer Sgt. Joshua Allred’s conduct “not reasonable or necessary,” while two others determined the opposite, though one of of them found parts of the response problematic.
Because of divergent expert opinions, Gill said the office asked a panel of judges to convene a grand jury to decide if Allred’s conduct broke the law. The grand jury declined to indict Allred.
“We believed that it would be beneficial to include the community in the decision of whether to file criminal charges against him,” Gill wrote in his finding letter, released during a Friday news conference, which referenced Allred.
Salt Lake City police said Friday that the department hasn’t finished its internal review of the shooting and that Allred remains employed on regular duty. In a written statement, the department said the grand jury’s decision shows “that our community deemed the officer’s actions justified under the law.”
“Every day, our officers come to work to help ensure community safety and to protect themselves and fellow officers — we are proud of our officers,” the department said.
How the call originated
On April 18, 2018, Pikyavit’s girlfriend called 911 around 12:15 p.m. to report that he had punched her “over and over” in the face and that he was suicidal. The woman told a dispatcher that Pikyavit had a knife — later determined to be a broken pair of scissors — and held it to his neck, according to Gill’s finding letter.
When police arrived, Pikyavit was outside the woman’s home, near 1100 E. Princeton Ave., but went inside after an officer tried to talk to him. As additional officers arrived, they tried to coax Pikyavit outside. When he didn’t exit the house, police lined up around its perimeter and waited.
Officers requested someone bring a less-lethal impact weapon to the scene and tried to talk to Pikyavit through a loudspeaker. Pikyavit would sometimes appear in the home’s front doorway, or a back mudroom, and it seemed that he was holding two knives, police said.
At times, officers were able to speak with Pikyavit, but they were unable to maintain contact as he continued to retreat inside. In one confrontation, Pikyavit told officers he was “going out with a bang,” Gill’s letter states. In another, Pikyavit said he wanted to die.
The SWAT team, including Allred and three others, arrived and took control of the scene at 1:18 p.m., about an hour after Pikyavit’s girlfriend called 911.
At 1:45 p.m., as additional SWAT officers arrived, police began to smell gas. Pikyavit appeared at the back of the house and said he was trying to light a match to burn down the house, adding that he wouldn’t go back to prison and that he was “going to die today,” police said. Officers turned off the home’s gas and power.
The police shooting
About five minutes later, Pikyavit opened the front door and walked onto the porch, holding a serrated knife in one hand and the half-scissor blade in the other. That’s when the four original SWAT officers, including Allred, moved into position more than 22 feet from the porch’s bottom steps, Gill wrote.
Allred had an AR-15 rifle and positioned himself behind an officer holding a ballistic shield. Officer Bob Norgaard was behind Allred, armed with the 40mm less-lethal gun, Gill wrote. Another officer stood behind Norgaard and had an AR-15 at the ready.
Officers yelled for Pikyavit to come out with his hands up, to stay on the porch, to drop the knife, to stop and to sit down. Pikyavit responded by moving his hands back and forth, up and down, while holding the knife. He told officers to “shoot me,” according to body camera footage.
Moving down the porch steps, Pikyavit soon threw the serrated knife on the ground, transferring the scissor blade to his right hand. Officers continued telling him sit down and drop the knife.
Milliseconds after Pikyavit stepped off the bottom porch step onto a concrete walkway, Norgaard fired the less-lethal round. Milliseconds after that, Allred fired. It was 1:51 p.m.
Pikyavit collapsed and police moved in. He died at the scene.
Allred later told investigators that Pikyavit made eye contact with him while he was on the porch and said “I’ll kill you,” a report released Friday states.
Allred said he perceived Pikyavit stepping off the porch as the man’s “last stand” and that Pikyavit would “make his charge toward us and try to hurt one of us,” the report states.
Differing expert opinions
While Gill doesn’t always bring in outside experts to consult on police shootings, he wrote in his findings letter that prosecutors wanted “to better understand the immediacy of the threat presented by Mr. Pikyavit, its dynamic nature, and the circumstances surrounding the use of deadly force.”
Prosecutors first spoke with Eric Daigle, a Connecticut-based law enforcement consultant and trainer. His review found issues with the Allred’s use of force and tactical response.
“Sgt. Allred was faced with a split-second decision in this rapidly evolving, tense, and uncertain event. His decision, however, to utilize deadly force rather than follow the established plan to first utilize a less lethal alternative was not reasonable or necessary,” Daigle determined, “and a well-trained officer would recognize the need to first utilize the identified less lethal means prior to resorting to deadly force.”
While Daigle said it was clear that Pikyavit had the “ability” to harm officers, he was unconvinced he had the “opportunity” or “intent” to.
“What is clear is that at that time there were more than twenty officers stationed around the perimeter of the residence armed with various less-lethal weapons, shields, and lethal weapons,” Daigle wrote.
Gill’s office then retained former Ogden Police Chief Randy Watts and Missouri-based use-of-force expert Steve Ijames.
Both said Allred’s use-of-force was reasonable and necessary. They said Pikyavit posed a clear threat because he was armed with an edged weapon, was around 21 feet from officers and wasn’t listening to police commands.
(Police are often taught the 21-foot rule, which originated in Salt Lake City, and says that someone 21 feet away with an edged weapon can run at an officer and stab them before the officer has time to draw their gun and fire. The training technique is controversial.)
“Accordingly, a prudent and properly trained officer facing these or similar circumstance would have reasonably perceived this action to be an attempt to cause death or serious physical injury,” Ijames wrote.
Ijames also noted that while officers that day generally acted in accordance with “contemporary” policies and training, the SWAT team’s “tactical resolution strategy” wasn’t in accordance and “increased the probability of a negative outcome at the crisis site.”
He said officers should have created more space between themselves and Pikyavit and stood behind police vehicles or other barriers so he wouldn’t have easy access to them if he charged with the blade. He also argued Norgaard should have been instructed to fire at Pikyavit when he exited the house and didn’t drop the blades.
“Instead, team members were positioned in the open approximately 21 feet from the front porch,” Ijames wrote.
Salt Lake City police said the department received Gill’s finding letter and the experts’ reports Friday and will work to review them.
Why the criminal investigation took four years
Prosecutors announced the conclusion of their investigation into Allred more than four years after the shooting took place. After Pikyavit was killed, his father, Neil, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Salt Lake City police. That litigation remained on hold as both sides waited on Gill’s determination.
Gill attributed the delay to several factors, including Allred initially declining to speak with prosecutors about his decision to shoot, then sending them a written statement nine months later; experts reviewing and opining on the case; the COVID-19 pandemic; and convening a grand jury.
It’s unclear how often, if ever, Gill’s office has petitioned for a grand jury to review a police shooting. He declined to specify Friday.
His office evidently asked for one in the controversial police shooting of Danielle Willard in 2012. The Utah Supreme Court upheld a five-judge panel’s decisions not to convene a grand jury in that case.
Gill had ruled that the Willard shooting was unjustified and charged West Valley City police officer Shaun Cowley with manslaughter. A state court judge dismissed the charge after an October 2014 preliminary hearing, stating that there wasn’t enough evidence.
In SLCPD’s statement Friday, the department thanked the grand jury for its “thorough review and consideration” of the Pikyavit case, adding that the district attorney’s review took a “regrettable” amount of time.
“The recent decision by the grand jury demonstrates that our officers are called upon by the community to act with professionalism and bravery in very volatile and tense situations,” the statement read.
Pikyavit’s death marked the ninth police shooting in Utah in 2018. There were 30 police shootings that year, 19 of them fatal. At the time, that level of lethal force, according to a Salt Lake Tribune database of police shootings, was the highest in recent memory.
Since then, Utah authorities matched that record in 2020 and exceeded it in 2021. There have been 12 in Utah this year.
