SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Oct. 5, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — A man police wanted to talk to after he was reported for elder abuse kept a SWAT team at bay for about six hours Friday in Salt Lake City.
The suspect, whose name has not yet been released, was taken into custody before 5 p.m. in an operation that began in mid-morning on Emerson Avenue, about 1100 East.
“Our officers came out here to try to make contact with an individual that was involved with a domestic violence situation,” Detective Greg Wilking, Salt Lake City Police Department, told Gephardt Daily.
“About 10:30 this morning, officers tried to make contact. The individual secured himself in his residence. As a result, we called out our SWAT team and tried to make contact with him and get him to come out peacefully.
“He resisted our efforts to do so, and as the afternoon wore on, we had to deploy more and more resources.”
Among those resources was a tear gas type substance fired into the residence. An officer was able to rescue a pet dog, covered with residue and irritated at the mouth and eyes.
“I am sure the dog was grateful for that because of the gas inside,” Wilking said.
In the end, SWAT team members entered the residence and conducted a room-to-room search for the suspect, “locating him and, thankfully, taking him into custody safely,” Wilking said.
“He may have been moving throughout the building as the incident wore on. He was located in an upstairs bedroom. He may have been able to barricade himself, to a degree, up in that room, which made it difficult, so various tools were used to make contact.”
Wilking said he did not know the relationship between the suspect and the elderly woman who allegedly was abused. He also didn’t know the degree of the abuse, “but anytime you’re dealing with domestic abuse and an elderly person, that is severe.”
The SLCPD took the operation slowly, taking methodical precautions to ensure the safety of officers and neighborhood residents, Wilking said.
“There’s always a possibility when someone is in a house that they may be armed, certainly knives, bats, sticks — the things people have access to in a house,” he said.
“We understand it’s a disruption to the street and the people who live here, but we want people to understand that we’re taking our time so that we have officer safety, so that we have safety of the people in the neighborhood, and then, so we can safely deal with the individual we are trying to come into contact with. So safety is an overarching goal, and sometimes that takes time.”
