SALT LAKE CITY — A man was arrested Sunday afternoon for allegedly pointing a gun at a family inside his apartment building in Salt Lake City, leading to a tense situation that caused police to issue a shelter-in-place order and close several nearby streets.
A resident on one of the upper floors of Sugarmont Apartments in the Sugar House neighborhood called police around noon, saying their neighbor was acting strange. The caller said their neighbor — later identified as 33-year-old Samuel Patrick Hanley — was asking for police and medical help because he thought someone broke into his apartment and stole his dog, and he feared he would be attacked. The caller said Hanley's behavior seemed like he was not in the right mental state, and they believed they saw a gun in his waistband.
Several other witnesses either called or told police at the scene that they saw a man with a gun. A family of four who lived in the building said they encountered Hanley in the hallway, and he pointed his gun at them. They told police they barricaded themselves inside their apartment, and then heard what sounded like two gunshots shortly afterward.
Out of precaution, police told residents to shelter in place and told others in the area to leave "due to the suspect’s elevated position," which increased the potential danger to the community, the Salt Lake City Police Department said. Streets in the area were also closed for about an hour.
Officers located Hanley's apartment and began communicating with him. He walked out of his apartment while holding a gun, which he dropped after being told to do so, then surrendered peacefully.
SLCPD said the suspect told officers there was someone else in the apartment, but they said they did a complete sweep and found nobody inside.
Police executed a search warrant for Hanley's apartment, during which they said they found three more guns in addition to the one he had in his possession when he was arrested, a large amount of ammunition, several hundred Xanax pills, hundreds of "miscellaneous" pills, 2.1 grams of methamphetamine, and other drug paraphernalia. Police also said the apartment was "filled" with empty alcoholic beverage containers.
Although nobody was injured, Hanley was arrested on four counts of aggravated assault because he pointed his gun at the family of four — who police said he did not even know. He was also arrested for various drug-related offenses, as well as possession of a firearm by a restricted person.
The arresting officers wrote in a probable cause statement that Hanley's actions "placed the general public at a high level of danger... put innocent lives at danger and assaulted unknown victims." They urged that he be held without bail, also citing his drug possession, mental state, illegal possession of firearms, and a "lack of care for the public as seen in his actions causing many to fear in the apartment complex."
A judge ordered that Hanley be held in the Salt Lake County Jail without bail.
"We really want to thank our community members in the Sugar House area — certainly this was a very unsettling situation," SLCPD spokesman Brent Weisberg said Sunday. "We had a lot of roads closed; it was a chaotic situation. We were telling people to go back inside their homes and inside their cars, to avoid this area, and that was just out of an abundance of caution."
