Lloyd Prescott trained hundreds of police officers to understand that a second of doubt could mean the difference between life and death in a shootout.
As the officer in charge of train-ing for the Salt Lake County sheriff's office, it is Prescott's job to make sure deputies know when deadly force is necessary and how to come out alive if a situation comes to that."It is rarely a conscious decision," Prescott told a reporter last summer. "You don't have time to make a value judgment. It is an unconscious decision based on perceptions that one's life is in danger."
Saturday he showed how it was done.
Prescott was teaching a Peace Officers Standards and Training class at the sheriff's office when he got word of the hostage situation at the library next door. Somehow he managed to slip into the room where Clifford Lynn Draper initially held 18 hostages.
SWAT team members were aware that Prescott was inside with the gunman and asked the media to refrain from releasing the information.
Nearly 51/2 hours later, when Draper appeared to become agitated and began reaching into a bag he said held explosives, Prescott reacted, ordering the others to "hit the floor." He pulled his concealed gun and fired three times, striking Draper in the chest.
"If I had to describe one word to talk about Lloyd Prescott it is courage," said Sheriff's deputy Jim Potter. "The guy is just a role model and example of that word - courage.
"He is the kind of guy who would do something like he did today - put himself in harm's way to make somebody else safe," Potter said. "He's the kind of person you can count on in difficult situations to make a good decision and he did. He did a heck of a job for those people who were stuck in there."
Prescott, 46, is a Utah native who was born in Kamas, Summit County, to Vernon and Donna Prescott. He grew up in the Mill-creek area and graduated from Granite High School.
After serving an LDS mission, he enrolled at the University of Utah where he "only took police science and criminology" classes, said his father Vernon Prescott.
Vernon Prescott watched broadcast reports of the hostage situation Saturday afternoon but initially didn't know his son was on the scene. Asked later about his son's heroic action, Vernon Prescott said "that's just him.
"That's the way he would've done it. I think there were some lives saved today," Vernon Prescott said.
One of Lloyd Prescott's fellow deputies agrees.
Salt Lake City Sheriff's Capt. Dave Bishop said Prescott's reaction was the culmination of 20 years of training and evidence of a "technically and tactfully efficient officer."
"He truly saved the lives of those people. He is a true, loyal friend and a `man who wears a white hat.' "
Prescott was hired by the Salt Lake County sheriff's office in 1972. He worked patrol, vice, on the SWAT team and as detective.
He assisted Salt Lake Sheriff Pete Hayward in defusing an April 1989 standoff when a Magna man briefly held two of his children hostage, threatening to kill them and later himself.
Six years ago, Prescott received the Sheriff's Star of Valor for disarming a man who threatened his mother with a knife.
Prescott became a training officer four years ago. In the interview last summer, Prescott said once an officer decides to use deadly force, he or she must act to stop the perceived threat.
"It is impractical to train our deputies to shoot to wound," Prescott said then. "They are taught to shoot for the center mass" - the middle of the chest.
Potter said, "You couldn't have picked a better (officer) to be in there."
Even as the standoff came to an end, Prescott was "calm, collected and cooperative.
"I personally escorted him to a point where he came back into contact with a hostage. His only concern was asking the hostage if she was OK," Potter said. "He was still more worried about others than himself."
As is policy with any shooting, Prescott was placed on administrative leave while investigators continue their work.