By Don Sweeney
The Charlotte Observer
SALT LAKE CITY — A man wielding a knife hijacked a U.S. Postal Service truck, then led officers on a “chaotic” chase, Utah police reported.
Officers responded to reports of a man seen trying to open car doors at 12:51 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 5, Salt Lake City police said in a news release.
The man threatened a postal carrier with a knife and stole the Postal Service truck while officers were en route, police said. The carrier was not hurt.
The truck was involved in a hit-and-run incident in Bountiful and tried to run over two people in a parking lot, police told KSTU.
Officers followed the driver and boxed him in with their vehicles in Centerville, where he tried to ram them, KTVX reported.
The man barricaded himself inside the mail truck and pointed a black shovel at police as if it were a rifle, police told the station.
“I saw him be tased, and he was pulling out the taser and then started throwing mail out the truck,” onlooker Tishina Lukenbach told KSTU. “I was like, ‘Okay, this is more serious than what I thought.’”
Police also fired pepper balls and beanbags at the man, who eventually surrendered but bit an officer on the hand while being arrested, KSL reported.
“It was a pretty chaotic situation, we tried multiple times to de-escalate, to calm him, he just wouldn’t communicate with us,” Centerville Police Chief Paul Child told KTVX.
Centerville is about 15 miles north of Salt Lake City.
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