By Police1 Staff
SALT LAKE CITY — Recently released body cam footage shows Utah officers negotiating with a man armed with a knife and a half-pair of scissors before fatally shooting him.
On April 18, Salt Lake City police were called to a home after a woman said her boyfriend punched her multiple times and held the scissor to her neck, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Police arrived and encountered 32-year-old Delorean Pikyavit and attempted to speak with him.
Pikyavit went inside his girlfriend’s home and police spent more than an hour negotiating with the suspect, who reportedly said he was “going out with a bang.” At one point during negotiations, police smelled natural gas, and Pikyavit alluded to igniting a lighter.
Capt. Lance VanDongen said SWAT officers turned off the house’s gas. An hour and 15 minutes into the standoff, Pikyavit came out of the home with the knife and the scissor and repeatedly told officers to shoot him.
Pikyavit can be seen on video pounding his chest and raising and lowering his arms as officers order him to drop the weapons.
“We can end this peacefully. Come on, man, put the knife down,” a police negotiator said.
The suspect dropped one weapon but kept the other and stepped off the porch before two officers shot him almost simultaneously — one with a rifle and one with a “less lethal weapon” that fired a “spongy” bullet, police said. Pikyavit was later taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
VanDongen said Pikyavit’s girlfriend, who was at a neighbor’s house during the incident, had “visible signs of assault.” Police later learned Pikyavit was a Utah State Prison parolee who walked away from a halfway house in March.