OREM, Utah - Orem Police have released disturbing body camera video of a confrontation where a man in the backseat of a car got out and pointed what appears to be a gun at the officers.
The officers said they were investigating a report of a suspicious vehicle and the situation quickly escalated.
It started with a phone call. A resident called 911, saying a young man knocked on her door and asked for someone she didn't know. She says the young man stayed in a car parked outside her house with three other people.
Cpl. Vance and Officer Sillitoe arrived and were speaking to four people inside the vehicle, which had dark tinted windows.
Anton Bay, 19
They were in the process of letting the group go when they found out a passenger in the back seat had given a fake name.
What you see in the video is what happened when Officer Sillitoe confronted that person.
Orem Police confirmed 19-year-old Anton Bay is the person in the back seat who gave a fake name and pointed what appeared to be a gun at police.
The firearm was a BB gun but officers didn't know that until they grabbed it from Bay's hands.
As you can hear at the end of the video, the suspect said he wanted the officers to kill him.
Luckily, that didn't happen.
"The second officer who was standing outside the car at the time saw the handgun come up and drew his gun with all intentions on shooting the suspect," said Lt. Craig Martinez, the spokesman for Orem City Police.
Martinez said they released the video to show how police have to react to changing situations.
Orem Police said in the Facebook post there are a few points it hopes everyone can take something from this video:
1. See how fast things can happen and we are left playing "catch up".
2. This gun ended up being a BB gun but we didn't know that until after the officer grabbed it out of the suspects (sic) hands
3. It looked and sounded like a real gun.
4. Cpl. Vance was too close and his natural reaction was to reach out and take the gun from him.
5. Had he been a bit further away, this may have ended differently because what you can't see from this angle is that Officer Sillitoe had seen the gun at the last second and drew his handgun but decided not to shoot because Cpl. Vance had gotten too close to the suspect to take him down.
6. This situation is NOT being used to critique any other incident that happened somewhere else. The circumstances here are not the same, none of them are.
7. Every use of force situation is different and can't be compared to each other.
8. Our officers did everything right......ie. good officer safety positions, good calm demeanor with the occupants, smart tactical sense etc. These are seasoned officers with both SWAT experience and one with combat experience in the military.
9. Sometimes when people want to do bad things, we can't prevent it, we can only try to minimize the damage.
10. The officers are glad that both themselves and the suspect ended up being unharmed.
It happens this fast folks. We all know that this is part of our job, doesn't mean we look forward to it!
