SARATOGA SPRINGS, Utah — Questions remain tonight, following shots allegedly being fired during a traffic stop in Saratoga Springs on Thursday.
FOX 13 News spoke with Chris Bertram, a retired Deputy Chief of Police for the Unified Police Department about the incident.
"The uniqueness is that this starts with a traffic stop and somewhere along the lines, law enforcement officers that are made aware that this individual has warrants," said Bertram.
That traffic stop took place on Harvest Hills Boulevard Thursday afternoon.
Saratoga Springs Police Chief Andrew Burton says officers say the driver was uncooperative and provided false information. Officers later learned he was a suspect in what the chief called "some pretty serious crimes."
"There's a lot of different systems that we have the FBI has a National NCIC system that can put notifications out of people that are wanted or stolen property or armed and dangerous and we need to use some caution on those people," said Bertram.
At some point, shots were fired during the incident and the suspect took off. He eventually ditched his car and ran away.
A Department of Public Safety helicopter spotted him hiding in a canal.
Bertram touched on some of the challenges of a case like this.
"You're going to have to secure all the scenes to make sure if there's any evidence that are involved with the officer-involved shooting or with potential other crimes that that individual committed and they are going be investigated and potentially charged," said Bertram. "We also have potentially other criminal activity that has to be investigated normally separately, with regards to, you know, criminal acts that may have been committed by the suspect."
FOX 13 News reached out to the Utah County Attorney's Office on Friday trying to get the answers to several questions.
Those questions include who fired a weapon? Was anyone hit? What was the suspect pulled over for in the first place? What are the "serious crimes" he was wanted for?"
When we visited their office in Provo we were told the incident is under investigation and they had no comment at this time.
"I would say that we probably got a few of those answers yesterday because we do know that the individual was stopped on a traffic stop," said Bertram. "We do know that there was information provided to the officers about potentially a warrant that there may be, you know, an armed and dangerous, you know out there, whether it was a BOLO or just a notification that this individual may be armed and dangerous, that tells us a lot."
Bertram told FOX 13 News on Friday that he believes it will be sometime soon that we will have a good idea of what happened in this incident.
"We're probably going to get some information that answers some of those questions, but we may not get the final answer for a while because again how those protocols shootings are investigated, sometimes it can take, you know, months and, you know, even years," said Bertram.
On Thursday, Chief Burton said a female passenger inside of the vehicle at the time was detained for questioning. The suspect's identity hasn't been released at this time.
