He and his fellow officers have been called heroes. They have been honored by community leaders and state lawmakers for their actions.
But Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Josh Scharman is extremely reluctant to talk about what happened on the night of Feb. 12 that earned him and his colleagues such high praise.
Scharman, along with Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Andy Oblad, detective Dustin Marshall and detective Brett Olsen were the first officers to arrive at Trolley Square after 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic randomly opened fire on shoppers as he walked through the building, killing five and seriously wounding four.
The officers met up with off-duty Ogden police officer Ken Hammond who had been in the mall having dinner before the start of the shooting. The group cornered Talovic near Pottery Barn Kids where he was shot and killed.
The quick response by those officers saved countless more lives. But Scharman, speaking publicly for the first time about the incident, said he and the other officers aren't comfortable with the media attention they have received. He said their efforts shouldn't be singled out.
"Every officer's response that night was outstanding," he said. "Everyone did an amazing job."
But even more important to the officers, they say the unwanted attention may take away from what they say should be the real focus — the victims.
"That's where our thoughts should be," Scharman said. "This isn't about us at all. We get paid to do a certain service to the community," he said.
Although Scharman tries to deflect attention by saying it could have been any officer who arrived first that day, others point to the fact it was fortunate Scharman and his group were the first to get to the mall. Scharman is one of the men who trains the department's SWAT team and frequently participates in exercises training officers for such an incident.
When Scharman arrived at Trolley, his training instinctively took over. Engaging in a gun battle with Talovic wasn't what was hard, but rather realizing the carnage and destruction Talovic had caused.
Still, Scharman felt his job was easier compared to other officers who had to stay in the mall and be around the destructive scene for up to four hours.
Oblad and Hammond moved in on Talovic from the south end of the mall while Scharman, Marshall and Olsen confronted him from the north.
When a person is exhibit- ing the kind of aggressive behavior as Talovic did, Scharman said there's little left to negotiate.
"The only thing police can do is stop him from completing his plan," he said.
In a case like Trolley, police can't control the weapons the suspect has or the amount of training or preparation he has made for his rampage, Scharman said.
While police wish they could have done more, they feel they succeeded in doing their jobs in the sense that from the moment Oblad and Hammond confronted Talovic, no one else was shot.
When Scharman and his group entered the store, Talovic was backed into Pottery Barn Kids, firing into the mall's hallway while occasionally taking cover behind a door, he said. Scharman gives high praise to Oblad and Hammond for distracting Talovic and keeping his attention while they exchanged shots with him from a bad angle behind a pillar.
As for the final confrontation, Scharman would only say, "The exchange went as we trained countless times."
He also gave high praise to the department and Chief Chris Burbank for allowing the SWAT team to "have the correct weapons and background to positively end him as a threat."
The longer Scharman talked about the incident, however, it was clear that even he knew this call was not comparable to the many others he had been on before.
As he moved toward the Pottery Barn Kids, it was like everything was in slow motion, he said. Scharman said he couldn't believe that despite being surrounded by officers, Talovic continued to fire.
"I couldn't believe this was actually happening," he said. "How do you get to this?"
Even after Talovic was down, Scharman said the officers didn't believe the threat was over. As a routine safety precaution, Talovic was handcuffed, although he was already dead, and a guard placed over him as the other officers spent the next 40 minutes systematically searching the mall for a possible second gunman. There was even at one point rumors of a third gunman, he said.
"We didn't think the threat was over," he said.
It was only later, once officers determined Talovic was the lone gunman and the threat was over, that the impact of what happened hit Scharman.
He said what made the Trolley incident different from other tragedies was that this is a place many people go.
Scharman's own wife and kids frequently went to The Old Spaghetti Factory, adding he's thought how the tragedy could have affected his family or any other family in Utah that night.
"That's what's so disturbing to (police) about the victims," he said. "If you can't go to the store and buy a Valentine's Day card without some feeling of safety ... that's a sad thing," he said.
It's because of the randomness of the crime and because it involved completely innocent people, Scharman calls the shooting spree, "Just senseless. Absolutely senseless."
Scharman and his fellow Salt Lake City officers were on routine paid administrative leave following the shooting but were cleared to go back to work about two weeks ago. On his first night back, Scharman was involved in serving a warrant with his SWAT team.
Although he is moving on with his job, he admitted an incident like Trolley was something that he'd never forget.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com