Police: Suspect on the loose after shooting man in Tooele home
Mar 20, 2022, 10:49 AM | Updated: Jun 18, 2022, 9:02 pm
TOOELE, Utah — Police are searching for an armed suspect who they say shot a 21-year-old man inside his Tooele home Saturday night.
The incident happened around 12:30 a.m. in the area of 1200 East, also known as Droubay Road, and 970 North.
A detective with the Tooele Police Department said this looks like it was initially a burglary — a crime of opportunity — that the suspect thought the house was empty and didn’t know a man was in the basement.
“The victim was in the basement of the home. He hears a noise upstairs. He walks upstairs from the basement and is approaching one of the bedrooms, and as he approaches that bedroom, that’s when he is shot in the shoulder,” said TPD Det. Colbey Bentley.
No one else was in the home.
Bentley said there was no altercation between the suspect and the victim before the shooting.
The victim was able to call police and then drive himself to the hospital in Tooele. He then was taken by ambulance to a Salt Lake area hospital.
Police say he’s in stable condition and that the injury is non-life threatening, adding that a difference of just a few inches could have made this a much more serious, or even fatal, gunshot wound.
“Just a couple inch difference. I mean, we’re talking that we could have been looking at a fatality,” Bentley said. “A lot different story than what we have right now. Definitely very lucky right now that what we’re looking at right now is just a shoulder injury.”
The shooter ran out the back door of the home and is still on the run.
Tooele police called in a helicopter from the Department of Public Safety to help search Saturday night, but they weren’t able to track the suspect down.
The only description is a white man in his 20s or 30s, wearing all black, with a bandana over his face.
Police say they don’t have any solid leads of where the suspect might be and are asking for the public’s help. They said to call in anything suspicious and to also check doorbell cameras and other security footage.
“Lock your doors. If you have doorbell cameras, if there’s motion added, definitely check that. And if you see something suspicious — someone walking around, someone in the backyard, something like that — give us a call. Let us check that out. Let us make sure you’re safe and all the residents here are safe,” Bentley said.
