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SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake police on Friday released body camera video of a fatal police shooting that started with a bizarre confrontation with a man during a traffic stop that he was not involved with.
About 1:40 a.m. on Jan. 9, a Salt Lake police officer pulled over a pickup truck near 375 South and 765 West. In the video, the officer is sitting in his patrol car verifying the driver's vehicle registration and license when he is startled by 32-year-old Chandler Grillone, who was not involved in the traffic stop but approached the officer's vehicle and knocked on the driver's side window.
"What are you doing? Get back," the officer orders Grillone as he exits his vehicle. "Get up in front of the car right now."
In body camera video, there appears to be physical contact as the officer pushes Grillone back, and Grillone appears to resist.
During their interaction, Grillone makes several odd comments such as, "This is a citizen's audit" and "What are you doing? This is not illegal" while pointing to the pickup that was pulled over, prompting the officer to respond, "What are you … talking about?"
"Buddy, you better get away from me right now," the officer says.
"Why?" Grillone replies.
As the officer calls for backup on his police radio, Grillone can be heard asking, "Who are you?" before telling the officer to "beat it."
"What did I do? ... What's your name?" Grillone continues before appearing to take a fighting stance against the officer while clinching something in his right hand. The officer orders him several times to drop what's in his hand and get on the ground.
"Why? What'd I do?" Grillone responds in the video. "You don't have the authority to tell me to get on the ground."
Grillone then walks over to the pickup that was pulled over and jumps into the back of the bed. The officer tells emergency dispatchers on his police radio that Grillone appears to have a knife while ordering him at gunpoint to get on the ground.
"It's not a knife, you liar. You don't know what it is. Identify it," he tells the officer.
Grillone then jumps out of the pickup truck and starts walking toward the passenger side of the officer's patrol car where police say a community member who was doing a ride-along with the officer that night was still sitting. Grillone appears to point at her as he walks toward the car despite multiple orders to stop.
The officer then fires five rounds. Grillone falls to the ground and, while sitting up, asks the officer, "How many you got left?"
The officer tells dispatchers, "Shots fired!" and that he can't see if anything is still in Grillone's hand as he orders him to roll over. About 30 seconds later in the video, Grillone collapses, falling backward to the ground. He was taken to a local hospital where he died the next day.
As backup officers and paramedics approach, the officer looks at his hand and tells them, "He came after me, I don't know if I've been cut."
On Friday, Salt Lake police released a statement saying, "The officer involved in this incident received an injury consistent with a sharp-edged object," and that "a weapon from Grillone" was recovered at the scene. Police did not specify what the weapon was.
An outside agency will now conduct an investigation into the police shooting and turn its findings over to the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, which will decide if the officer was legally justified in shooting and killing the man.
"This was a very quickly unfolding situation, and I am incredibly relieved that our officer wasn't injured more severely," said Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown. "While the investigation is still ongoing, what I can say is that this certainly was a dangerous situation that resulted (in) an injury to our officer and that posed a serious and imminent threat to his life and potentially the lives of others."
Last May, Grillone was arrested for assaulting people at random during Mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. He pleaded guilty in November and was going through mental health court at the time of his death.
