WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah, Nov. 19, 2025 (Gephardt Daily) — The West Valley City Police Department has identified the man taken into custody Wednesday morning after he allegedly rammed a police vehicle and was fired on by a WVCPD officer.
The suspect in the officer-involved critical incident is Stephen Lopez, 25.
According to information released earlier by the department, Lopez had been asked to leave a temporary shelter where the officer was working as a security agent.
Upon leaving the facility, Lopez reportedly got into a white van, then used it to ram the officer’s vehicle, which forced it into an embankment. The officer then fired a shot at the van, but did not strike Lopez.
“Prior to the temporary shelter, the last known residence for Lopez was in Idaho,” the WVCPD update says.
“Lopez has been booked for aggravated assault, a third-degree felony; theft of a motor vehicle, a second-degree felony; failure to stop, a third-degree felony; and (leaving the scene of an) accident, a class A misdemeanor.”
Roxeanne Vainuku, West Valley City Police spokeswoman, said earlier that the suspect fled the scene, near Redwood Road and 3300 South, after the officer fired at him.
“An officer pursued that suspect a short distance,” Vainuku said at an early news conference. “The suspect then returned back to the parking lot of the shelter where he was taken into custody.”
Neither Lopez nor the officer was injured, she said. The incident meets the criteria for an Officer-Involved Critical Incident (OICI).
“So an officer-involved critical incident protocol team, which is headed up by UPD, is investigating,” Vainuku said.
The protocol requires an outside agency to investigate to ensure impartiality, she said, “and to make sure that every incident like this is investigated thoroughly and professionally. So we will be just kind of on the outside of that while another agency is investigating. That will take some time for them to work through the details of that.”
The OICI protocol team will “be working through their investigative process, and we’ll be cooperating with them fully to provide them any information that we can,” Vainuku said.
No injuries were reported as a result of the incident, Vainuku said. The officer inside the patrol vehicle when it was hit did not require medical attention.
Traffic was affected when several lanes were blocked during the initial investigation.
