WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah - A man police say was shot in the lobby of a West Valley City Police station after allegedly pointing a gun at an officer on Monday morning is not a stranger to the law.
Police said James Ramsey Kammeyer entered the lobby of the station, located at 3575 South Market Street, and, while talking to an officer behind a glass partition, allegedly pulled a handgun from one of his pockets and pointed it at the officer and a records clerk who was working nearby.
The officer called for assistance and several other officers responded. Police made contact with Kammeyer in the lobby. One of the officers fired an undisclosed number of rounds.
Kammeyer was shot twice in his right arm and taken to an area hospital. He was released on Monday evening and booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on multiple charges.
This isn't the first time Kammeyer has had a run-in with the law. Back in 1998, police investigated him for sexually abusing a child. He was sentenced to five years probation and placed on the state sex offender registry.
Last December, police confronted a knife-wielding Kammeyer, who claimed his estranged wife was trying to take his kids and that he wanted officers to kill him. That incident ended peacefully.
"At that point in time he told our officers he wanted to die because he was on the sex offender registry and his wife was taking his kids from him," said West Valley City Police Sgt. Jason Hauer.
Police don't know what Kammeyer's motivation was on Monday, but if it had anything to do with being on the sex offender registry, he's only a few months from being removed from the registry.
"He only had a little bit of time left in the grand scheme of things," said Steve Gehrke, Utah Dept. of Corrections.
Because of the way the law was written, Kammeyer only had to spend ten years on the registry after the five years probation.
"By today's standard, if someone was convicted of the same crime, they'd be on there for life, it's a different story today," Gehrke said.
While the investigation into Monday's incident continues, Kammeyer is still scheduled to be removed from the sex offender registry in January 2014.
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