SALT LAKE CITY — Three men face criminal charges after police say they went to a Salt Lake residence looking for a man who no longer lived there but then decided to assault the current tenant.
Christopher Begue, 21, of Salt Lake City, Tarren Gomez, 24, of Draper, and Tag Fowers, 20, of Salt Lake City, were each charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court with aggravated burglary, a first-degree felony.
On Sunday, the three men went to a home near 2200 South and 1900 East and approached one of the residents outside. The man was previously acquainted with Begue, police say.
Begue asked about another man who used to live there. The man told Begue that the other man no longer lived there and his whereabouts were unknown. That’s when the man looked over at the car Begue arrived in and “and saw multiple guns pointed at him,” according to charging documents.
The man was then hit in the head with an unknown object and knocked to the ground. “Once he gained alertness, he saw a gun in his face,” the charges state.
Begue forced the man inside the house and they went to the previous roommate’s room to prove he was no longer there.
The man said he was hit again and knocked unconscious. When he came to, he heard Begue yell that if he was lying, “he would come back and ‘shoot the whole house up!’” according to the charges.
After the trio left the house, they came across a man walking his dog along Market Street about an hour later and got into a confrontation with him for an unknown reason, a police affidavit states. The men got out of their car to further engage with the dog walker and during the ensuing assault, one of them fired a shot into the air, according to police. The man was not seriously injured.
Police searching the area found the suspects’ vehicle at a nearby restaurant where the men were eating and arrested them inside, the affidavit says.