Newly released body camera footage shows the moments after a car that Salt Lake City police were pursuing crashed last month near the 9th and 9th whale sculpture, killing a passenger and injuring its driver.
Officers began following the car after an Oct. 8 shooting at the Durango Bar, located at 923 S. State Street, which left a 20-year-old man wounded with a gunshot wound to the leg. Responding police saw the vehicle speed off from the area, prompting the pursuit.
Minutes before the shooting, police had received 911 calls about a loud party about a block from the bar. Some of those callers reported hearing gunfire, police said in a news release this week.
Three officers, each in separate patrol cars with flashing lights and blaring sirens, chased the black Mercedes until it ultimately crashed near the roundabout at 1100 E. 900 South. Charging documents indicate the car was traveling at 71 mph seconds before it hit a curb and wrecked.
The roughly six minutes of footage released from each officer does not show the crash. Instead, it shows officers’ point-of-view as they arrive at the roundabout and exit their vehicles to see the damaged car laying on its side on a patch of grass beyond the whale sculpture, just off a sidewalk.
As police approached the car, they realized people were still inside and called for medical help, the footage shows. Later, one officer asks another, “Is he [dead]?”
“I think so,” the officer responds, referring to who investigators would later learn was the car’s passenger, 21-year-old Douglas Rodriguez.
The other man inside the car, 20-year-old Josue Hernandez-Perez, can be heard telling police that he can’t get out and that his passenger is not talking, the footage shows. It ends as police begin to break out the car’s windshield, trying to extract the men.
Rodriguez was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Hernandez-Perez was taken to a hospital before being booked into jail, where he remains without the option to post bail. He was later charged last month with a single count of manslaughter, a second-degree felony, in connection with Rodriguez’s death.
Charging documents mention his blood alcohol content was three times higher than Utah’s legal limit of 0.05.
After his arrest, Hernandez-Perez told investigators that he and Rodriguez had gone to a party before the wreck and left after about an hour, the documents state. As they drove off, Rodriguez saw police cars passing with their lights and sirens on and started “tripping,” Hernandez-Perez said, pushing Hernandez-Perez’s leg down on the accelerator and saying, “Go, go, go, go.”
Hernandez-Perez said he didn’t see police pursuing him until he crashed, the documents state.
But investigators cast doubt on Hernandez-Perez’s statement, writing that while he “claimed that the victim pushed his leg down and told him to go,” he was also “driving at a high rate of speed for over one mile, inconsistent with someone holding his leg down during this time.”
Police did not release further details about the bar shooting, or any other shootings that may have occurred nearby that night, including whether or not investigators believe Hernandez-Perez or Rodriguez were connected to the calls. The Salt Lake County district attorney’s office hadn’t filed any additional charges as of Thursday afternoon, a spokesperson said.
While no officers fired weapons during the pursuit, and police did not use specific pursuit tactics — such as tire-deflation devices, or a “precision immobilization technique,” which involves intentionally hitting a fleeing vehicle to force it to stop — the police department still invoked its “officer-involved critical incident” protocol.
The protocol requires an outside agency to investigate an officer’s use of force “which results in serious bodily injury or death of a subject during a law enforcement encounter,” according to the Salt Lake County protocol document.
As per the protocol, the three officers involved in the pursuit were placed on administrative leave after the crash. They have since returned to regular duty, according to a news release.
“Based on the evidence we have available to us today, our officers acted in the interest of public safety and relied on the information available to them during a rapidly unfolding situation,” Salt Lake City police Chief Mike Brown said in a statement. “We are fortunate this incident did not result in any further harm or injury to our officers or our community members.”