WEST VALLEY CITY — Police here shot and killed a man outside a busy 7-Eleven store Wednesday morning after the man failed to respond to officers' orders and then pulled a weapon on them.

Police did not immediately release the name of the 22-year-old man pending notification of his parents, who live outside of Utah. The man had been arrested by local police last month on a non-violent offense felony warrant out of San Diego.

The incident began a little after 6:30 a.m. when a West Valley police officer went to the 7-Eleven on the corner of 3500 South and 4800 West to get a cup of coffee. While there, he noticed a car with California license plates parked in a handicap spot and a man that appeared to be sleeping inside the vehicle, said West Valley Police Capt. Steve Sandquist.

The officer stopped by the store two more times that morning and noticed each time the car and the man were still there. When he asked the clerk about the vehicle, she said the car had been there for quite a while.

"She said, 'Yeah, I don't know what he's doing here,"' Sandquist said.

The officer called for backup and went to knock on the driver's door to check on him. When he tried to talk to the man, however, the driver was "not very responsive" and did not follow the officers' demands to show some identification, Sandquist said.

At that point, the driver produced a handgun, Sandquist said. The officers believed they were in eminent danger and opened fire, killing the man in his car.

Police said both an officer or officers and the man in the car fired their weapons multiple times. No police officers were injured in the exchange.

"They were being watched over," Sandquist said.

Multiple witnesses reported hearing on average seven to eight shots.

"All I heard was gunshots. I heard the 'pop-pop,"' said a woman who was getting gas but did not want to give her name.

Immediately after the shooting the woman said the officer yelled at her to move her car to the opposite side of the parking lot behind the store.

"I thought I was watching a TV show," she said of the chaos.

Steve Rastella said he had stopped at the store earlier that morning before the shooting and had seen the man slumped over in his car, apparently sleeping sound. He said the man, a white male in his 20s, "had a shamrock tattoo on his neck.

"He was out. He was cold," said Rastella who noted the man didn't even flinch when he revved up his Harley right next to his vehicle. "He was comatose. He was just out like a light."

When Rastella drove by again a few hours later and saw the area blocked off with yellow police tape and police cars, he was shocked to hear what had happened.

"I was like, 'Whoa, I was just here getting a cup of coffee,"' he said.

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John Kimball was inside the store with about a dozen other customers when the shooting occurred. No one was injured inside the building. But when the shots were fired, Kimball said people started yelling, "We need to get out of the way."

"A bunch of us headed to go in the back room ... get your butt out of the line of fire," he said.

The situation took a bizarre twist at about 3 p.m. when officers removed the body from the vehicle the man was shot in and found what appeared to be a grenade. The bomb squad was called and at least one other nearby business in addition to the 7-Eleven was evacuated. Police later determined the object was not a real grenade.


E-mail: preavy@desnews.com

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