Man, 33, shot dead by Sandy City Police officer

File photo: Gephardt Daily/Monico Garza/SLCScanner

SANDY, Utah, March 26, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — A 33-year-old man was shot and killed by a Sandy City Police officer early Sunday morning while officers responded to a call of a possibly suicidal person.

Sgt. Greg Moffit, SCPD, told Gephardt Daily the incident happened at about 1 a.m. Sunday in the area of 1000 East in the area of 11600 South.

“We can confirm that we did have an officer involved shooting this morning at about 1 o’clock, and it was fatal,” Moffit said. “There was the involved party that was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

Moffit said a county-level officer-involved-critical incident team will be investigating, so his details are limited.

“I can’t really go into a lot of the investigative details because it’s inappropriate for me to speculate because I don’t have all the details,” he said. “But what I can tell you is that we had officers that were dispatched to a person that would appear to be suffering from a mental health crisis and was suicidal.

“As our officers were coming into the area, one of our officers happened to see the subject from the dispatch call walking on 10th East near 11600 S.

“When our officer encountered him, the subject presented an immediate threat to our officer. And because of those actions, our officer did discharge their firearm.”

Moffit said the subject was on foot, but could not say if the man killed was armed with a weapon, he said.

“That’s gonna be those investigative details that the protocol team will, they’ll be finding all of that stuff out.”

The man died at the scene and was not transported, Moffit said.

The officer involved has been placed on paid administrative leave, in keeping with OICI protocol.

After the investigation is complete, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office will make the final judgement on whether the shooting was justified.

Moffit stressed that Sandy City officers are well trained in mental health responses and crisis de-escalation techniques.

“Unfortunately, in this case, this was the outcome we never liked to see.”

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