Weber County Attorney Christopher Allred has determined that law enforcement authorities were justified in the use of deadly force in four fatal shootings in the county dating to August 2024.
Authorities were also justified in using such force in the shooting last May of a fifth suspect, who survived the incident, the attorney said.
Allred’s determinations, not previously reported on and based on reports on each incident by the Weber County Attorney’s Force Investigation Team, are outlined in letters from the county attorney to the varied law enforcement agencies involved in the incidents. Some are posted online; two more were supplied to KSL.com in response to a public records request. The most recent decision from Allred was issued earlier this month.
Two incidents, on Aug. 6, 2024, and Nov. 17, 2024, occurred in West Haven, and two others, on Nov. 24, 2024, and May 13, occurred in Ogden. The fifth took place in Roy on Aug. 17, 2024. KSL.com had previously reported on the investigation into the last deadly police encounter in Weber County prior to the Aug. 6, 2024, incident, a Jan. 14, 2024, encounter in Riverdale that was deemed justified.
Here are details from Allred’s determinations on the more recent incidents, in the order of the date they occurred:
Alvaro Uriarte: Two Weber County sheriff’s deputies were justified in shooting and killing Alvaro Uriarte on Aug. 6, 2024, at an apartment in the 2200 South block of 1100 West in West Haven because of the threat the man posed to two children, Allred determined. Sheriff’s deputies were initially called to the scene because Uriarte “was acting erratic and threatening to kill himself, and was likely under the influence of meth,” reads Allred’s Feb. 10 letter to Weber County Sheriff Ryan Arbon on his findings.
Uriarte, 31, was at the end of a hallway as the two deputies entered the apartment, a knife in his hand, with two young children nearby. “Alvaro was making strange and unintelligible statements such as ‘everyone is dead,’ ‘this is a dream,’ and ‘did he kill ... did he eat the girl?’” Allred wrote.
Uriarte was cutting himself with a knife and also threatened to kill the children despite pleas from the officers and his fiancée, also present. The officers subsequently charged toward the man, and Uriarte entered a bedroom with the two children, locking the door behind him. One of the officers kicked a hole through the door, and both officers crouched down to the hole and fired on Uriarte through it, killing him. Neither child was injured.
The deadly force was justified, Allred determined, “to prevent death or serious bodily injury to the children.”
Jeremy Lundgreen: Three Roy police officers were justified in shooting Jeremy Lundgreen, a suspect in an “enticement of a minor case,” because he had repeatedly fired on them during their confrontation. Neighbors subsequently reported hearing 20 to 30 gunshots during the incident, which occurred in a residential neighborhood. The exchange of gunfire occurred Aug. 17, 2024, and Lundgreen, 46, died two days later of the gunshot wounds he sustained.
“Under these circumstances, it was reasonable for each officer to believe that the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or an individual other than the suspect,” Allred wrote in his Nov. 12, 2024, letter to Matt Gwynn, chief of Roy police.
Roy police were attempting to arrest Lundgreen stemming from his communications with a detective he thought was a 13-year-old female. “Lundgreen wanted to meet the girl with the intention of having unlawful sexual intercourse,” reads Allred’s letter.
When police attempted to arrest the man, he fled in his truck to a cul-de-sac, then left the vehicle on foot, running into the backyard of a home. Officers gave chase, and Lundgreen, who was armed, fired on one of them in an “ambush attempt,” setting up a chaotic exchange of gunfire between the man and the three officers in the residential neighborhood.
Lundgreen eventually ran out of bullets, tossed his gun aside and pulled out his cellphone. An officer told Lundgreen to drop the item in his hand, which he thought might be a gun, and fired on him when he didn’t.
“Officers shouted commands at Lundgreen several times throughout the encounter to drop the gun and get on the ground, but he never made any attempt to comply. In fact, at various points throughout, Lundgreen shouted at officers, telling them to shoot him and to kill him. This suggests that Lundgreen was seeking to facilitate a ‘suicide by cop,’” reads Allred’s letter.
James Kudelka: Three Weber County Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed James Kudelka on Nov. 17, 2024, at a West Haven apartment complex after two “domestic violence incidents” that day involving the man and his girlfriend.
Officers forced open the door to the apartment after being called to the scene following the second incident because neither Kudelka, 30, nor his girlfriend, who was heard arguing inside, would let them in. Once open, Kudelka charged at the officers with a large kitchen knife, and one of them fired at the lunging man after another officer’s attempt to stun him with a Taser failed. Kudelka simultaneously closed the door on the deputies.
They again forced the door open, and two other officers fired on Kudelka, one of them seeing “a stabbing motion” from the man, both worried about the safety of Kudelka’s girlfriend. The knife was subsequently found about 3 feet from Kudelka’s body.
The first officer to shoot “had to make a split-second decision when the knife-wielding Kudelka rushed toward them,” Allred wrote in his June 24 letter to Arbon. Under such circumstances, “we find that it was reasonable for (the officer) to believe that deadly force was necessary,” justifying his actions, the county attorney said.
Given the “chaotic circumstances,” including Kudelka’s prior attempt to charge at the officers with a knife, Allred said the subsequent decisions of two other officers to fire on the man were also justified. “With such limited time to process the situation and react, we find that it was reasonable for both deputies, in that moment, to believe that their lives or the lives of their fellow deputies were in danger of death or serious bodily injury,” he wrote.
According to the report, Kudelka sustained 10 gunshot wounds, two of them possibly caused by one bullet.
Jeffrey Blue: Ogden police had been called to the Ogden home of Jeffrey Blue on Nov. 24, 2024, to aid the man’s wife as she attempted to get some things from the home. Police had been called to the home in 2021 and 2023 on domestic violence complaints, according to Allred’s June 10 letter on the case to Ogden Police Chief Jake Sube.
Blue, who had methamphetamine in his system, “was acting in an unpredictable and aggressive manner” with responding officers and ultimately stormed away from them to, in his words, “grab my ... gun.” Two officers pursued him, their duty weapons drawn, and Blue ultimately retrieved his weapon and turned to them “in an aggressive stance,” Allred wrote.
“Jeffrey then yelled out, ‘Count to three ... ' and as he yelled this, he flexed his muscles aggressively and flinched his arm upward. (An officer) fired his weapon in response, striking Jeffrey twice. Jeffrey died of the bullet wounds at the scene,” Allred wrote. “The gun was later determined to be a BB gun, but it is manufactured to resemble a Beretta 9mm handgun.”
Allred said the officer who fired on Blue was justified given the “tense and rapidly escalating circumstances,” the “dangerous” appearance of Blue’s gun and the man’s “unpredictable and aggressive manner.”
Brady Dupont: Brady Dupont sustained three gunshot wounds in a confrontation with an Ogden police officer on May 13, surviving the incident.
Things started when an officer came upon the man walking on Wall Avenue, a principal thoroughfare in Ogden, about 2 a.m. and stopped to question him. As the conversation proceeded, Dupont, 37, moved toward a grassy area off the street, then pulled two knives from his pocket, putting one in each hand, reads Allred’s Aug. 1 report on the confrontation to Sube.
The man started swinging his arms, ignored the officer’s commands to drop the knives and moved toward him, at one point saying, “You are going to have to shoot me.”
Dupont advanced to within 12 feet of the officer when he fired on the man, striking him three times. When asked at the hospital why he didn’t drop the knives, Dupont said “he wanted the officer to shoot and kill him because he did not want to go back to prison,” Allred wrote.
The officer was justified in his actions, given the danger posed by Dupont, armed with two knives and moving forward, and his refusal to obey police orders, according to Allred. “There is no question that it was reasonable for (the officer) to believe that he was in danger of serious bodily injury or death under these circumstances,” he wrote.