SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Aug. 2, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — No charges will be filed against two police officers who shot and critically injured a man armed with a pellet gun in Salt Lake City’s East Central neighborhood in November 2022.
George Albert Gulla, 39, was shot 11 times Nov. 8, 2022, in the detached garage of his family’s home at 1726 S. 900 East, where he had been living for about a week, according to the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office.
Gulla’s family reported he had been using illegal narcotics, and police responded to assist counselors from the Huntsman Mental Health Institute’s Mobile Crisis Outreach Team in making contact with him, police said.
Police say Gulla was sitting on a bed in the garage when he became agitated during the conversation with the counselors and a family member. He then reached toward the foot of the bed, “grabbed a gun off a shelf, and raised it,” according to the DA office’s review of the officer-involved shooting.
Salt Lake City police officers Taryn Culverwell and Nicholai Greenfield responded by firing 20 shots at Gulla, hitting him 11 times, then pulled him off the bed and onto the floor to handcuff him, the district attorney’s office report says. The weapon was later determined to be a pellet gun.
Culverwell likely fired 14 rounds, while Greenfield is believed to have fired six rounds during the incident, according to the district attorney’s office.
District Attorney Sim Gill declined to file charges against the officers Friday, saying the their decisions to use deadly force “would likely support a finding that they reasonable believed deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to themselves and/or others.”
The officers and medical personnel began rendering first aid at the scene before Gulla was taken by ambulance to a hospital.
Earlier this year, Gulla pleaded no contest to two counts of assault on a peace officer with use of a dangerous weapon, which were amended to third-degree felonies.
He later told investigators he had just woken up when counselors and officers arrived. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I felt threatened,” he said, according to the district attorney’s office.
