He’s assaulted a pregnant woman, a neighbor, and police. Will he finally go to prison?

SALT LAKE CITY — Body camera footage shows several Salt Lake City Police officers lining a staircase at the entrance of a second-level apartment in July 2023, before one of them pounds on the door.

That knock is a sound Joni Meikel won’t forget. It caused her ex-boyfriend, Kaden Beckstrom, 22, to stop violently attacking her.

“I could see it was actually the police,” she said.

The video shows Meikel opening the door, running past officers and down the stairs.

Then, as police start to handcuff Beckstrom, he fights back, screaming profanities and racial slurs. Officers used a wrap to restrain him, and then a hood because he kept spitting at them.

“Things just got really bad, really fast,” Meikel said about her short relationship with Beckstrom.

She said that wasn’t the first time he became violent, but it was the worst.

“He picked me up and he slammed me on my stomach on my bed and I remember feeling like, the support bars under my bed snap,” she said. “I just remember being like, ‘He’s going to kill me if I don’t do something.’”

Meikel said she was ten weeks pregnant at the time and later miscarried.

Beckstrom was charged with four felonies and seven misdemeanors in two domestic violence cases involving Meikel that summer. Plea deals offered him a chance to stay out of prison, and if he went to treatment and followed his probation conditions, felony convictions for assaulting Meikel and the responding police officers wouldn’t go on his record.

At the time, Meikel said she supported the deals because she wanted Beckstrom to get help. But he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

With repeated violations, Beckstrom had his probation in the domestic violence cases revoked then reinstated three different times.

Then, in September 2024, a Utah County man in his 60s told sheriff’s deputies Beckstrom attacked him outside his trailer home, unprovoked. He showed the responding deputy bumps and bruises on his head, and a gash on his arm from the assault.

“He hit me in the back of the head a bunch of times, and I don’t know, just all over,” the man is heard telling a deputy in video captured by a body worn camera. “I didn’t even hit him at all.”

In that case, Beckstrom got another deal. He pleaded to the misdemeanor charges he was facing in exchange for suspended jail time and a suspended fine. He was sentenced to probation.

Prosecutors in Utah County told the KSL Investigators that Beckstrom wasn’t going to face much jail time in their case even if he were to be convicted at trial. But their deal gave prosecutors in Salt Lake County another opportunity to go after real prison time.

“He attacked me while I was pregnant, to the point where… I thought I was going to die, and they just keep letting him out,” said Meikel.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill’s Office prosecuted Beckstrom in the assault case against Meikel in July 2023, when she was pregnant.

Gill said the deal they gave Beckstrom was appropriate, given input from Meikel, and Beckstrom’s limited criminal history at the time. But they structured that deal in a way that gave them options to come back and ask the court to impose the felony convictions and prison time without going to trial if Beckstrom didn’t clean up his act.

“It’s a compromise that’s there, but that’s the one that we came up with in this scenario to protect everybody’s interest,” said Gill. “Sometimes you make the offer to preserve the best thing that you can and also try to mitigate the harm to the victims and survivors.”

Earlier this week, the new conviction in the Utah County assault case led to Beckstrom getting sentenced to jail time that had previously been suspended in one of his prior domestic violence cases.

In advance of a hearing in the Salt Lake County case, Beckstrom wrote a letter to the judge, asking if he could keep the plea agreement as it is, to avoid having felonies on his record.

Friday, the judge ordered a pre-sentencing evaluation. Beckstrom is due back in court in February.

Have you experienced something you think just isn’t right? The KSL Investigators want to help. Submit your tip at investigates@ksl.com or 385-707-6153 so we can get working for you.

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Domestic violence resources

If you or someone you know is going through abuse, help is available.

• The Utah Domestic Violence Coalition operates a confidential statewide, 24-hour domestic abuse hotline at 1-800-897-LINK (5465).
• Resources are also available online at the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition website.
• YWCA Women in Jeopardy program: 801-537-8600
• Utah’s statewide child abuse and neglect hotline: 1-855-323-DCFS (3237)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233