Police Searching for Shooter in West Valley City
Jun 13, 2019, 7:29 PM | Updated: 10:49 pm
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah – West Valley City police said an argument led to a shooting outside an apartment building along Lake Crest Street. They are still trying to find the shooter.
Deputy Chief Robert Hamilton said a group of teenagers and adults were arguing outside a car when one of them pulled out a gun.
Hamilton said he fired several shots, hitting one of the others in the buttocks. The group got away from the shooter in their car. Police had already been called about the argument.
A nearby officer saw the car and tried to stop it, but they said the car did not stop. There was a short chase, then the car blew a tire.
We have identified the suspect in this morning’s shooting. He is a juvenile and is still outstanding. We are also looking for a vehicle that looks like this. It’s a white 2000 Mercedes ML3. The plate number is OD5RR. pic.twitter.com/dwmYz9m34Y
— WVC Police (@WVCPD) June 14, 2019
First responders took the person who’d been shot to the hospital. Police said his injury was not life-threatening. They questioned the others in the car to try to find leads.
“We have a lot of leads, but a lot of it is conflicting, so we’re still trying to work through a lot of that,” Hamilton said.
Police did not have much of a description of the shooter, except that he was wearing a red sweatshirt. They said he may have changed clothes after the shooting.
Witnesses saw him run into an apartment. Police called in a SWAT team to serve search warrants on a couple of units but they did not find him.
Leslie Filimoeatu lives down the street and shot video of the fight that led to the shooting. She said it’s not unusual to hear fighting on the street, but they didn’t expect it to escalate to a shooting.
“We’re used to the violence that happens here daily, so we kind of just though everything would blow over. We didn’t necessarily think he was going to shoot,” Filimoeatu said. “The kid lives here. His little brothers play here. There’s kids all around here. Yeah, you would think they would know better,”
