A 26-year-old man was charged with property damage Monday after prosecutors say he vandalized Gov. Spencer Cox’s campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this month.
The man is accused of smashing the office’s storefront glass on Nov. 5. The next day, Cox said it marked a “rough morning” for his campaign team, adding in a social media post that the person arrested “has targeted me and my family before.”
The charging documents released Monday detailed the moments leading up to the man’s arrest, along with a previous call about a month earlier involving the man at the Governor’s Mansion.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a news conference on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. On Nov. 6, he said the man accused of damaging his Salt Lake City campaign office had "targeted" him and his family before.
On Nov. 4, a day before the apparent vandalism, the man visited the Utah Capitol “several times,” saying that he was upset he couldn’t get a driver license, according to the charging documents. The next day at about 9 p.m., he spoke with Utah Highway Patrol troopers at the Capitol in a “rapid, nonsensical” way and told them he “wanted to be arrested so he could be off the street.”
A trooper referred him to a nearby homeless shelter, and the man left the area. But he later returned at about 10:30 p.m., when a trooper saw him jump over a railing into a restricted area of the building, according to charging documents.
The man then walked along a ledge that lead to Capitol offices, including Gov. Cox’s, the documents state. The troopers found him trying to open a locked door and pounding on windows, they said.
The man told them he had busted out glass at Cox’s campaign office earlier that night, and that he had also thrown rocks at the Governor’s Mansion, according to the charging documents. Troopers found the campaign office damaged, amounting to about $3,189 in repair costs, but there was no visible damage to the Governor’s Mansion.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Governor’s Mansion at 603 E. South Temple in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023.
Troopers had interacted with the man about a month earlier, when First Lady Abby Cox reported someone yelling for the governor outside the Governor’s Mansion at about 12:15 a.m. one morning, the documents state. Officers were able to “diffuse the situation” and sent the man on his way.
When the man was arrested Nov. 5, authorities determined he was suffering a mental health crisis. A trooper had begun the process of having him involuntarily committed, Salt Lake City police said.
The next day, on Nov. 6, West Valley police told authorities that the same man had told them he “needed to be placed into handcuffs otherwise he would commit a serious crime,” the documents state.
The man, Samuel Zun, faces a third-degree felony count of property damage and one misdemeanor count of stalking. He is currently in custody on a no-bail hold, a spokesperson for the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office said.
Court documents state that Zun was “overly interested in ‘killing enemies’” and discussed “getting into fights online with ‘Utah Senators.’” Zun’s family requested authorities intervene with hospitalization and said his mental health is declining, the charging documents note.
”The Defendant has admitted that he has been acting in a manner to gain the attention of the Governor himself,” a Utah Department of Public Safety agent said in charging documents.
His next court appearance is slated for Wednesday afternoon.
