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CENTERVILLE — Police shot and killed a man Tuesday after chasing him near a crowded parade route and onto Legacy Parkway, where four shots appeared to have been fired after he was stopped in the median between the Centerville exit and Glover Lane in Farmington.
The shooting occurred about 10:40 a.m. Cody Ray McCray, 32, of West Bountiful, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators said there were indications that he may have wanted to die in a "suicide by cop."
Police say the chase began near Centerville's Fourth of July parade on Main Street late Tuesday morning.
Centerville Police Sgt. Von Steenblik said his department received reports that McCray had been pursued by Salt Lake police in the downtown Rio Grande area for an unknown reason earlier Tuesday.
At 2 a.m., West Bountiful police reported that a Honda Civic had been stolen. The car belonged to McCray's girlfriend, whose name was not released. Bountiful police spotted the car about 2:30 a.m. and tried to stop it, but the driver fled and the pursuit was terminated, said Centerville Police Chief Paul Child.
"As the morning went on, the stolen car was spotted several times, but no effort was made to stop the vehicle because police knew who the suspect was," he said.
About 9:15 a.m., the stolen car was observed going north on Legacy Highway approaching the Parrish Lane exit in Centerville. The vehicle exited and went east on Parrish Lane toward Main Street, where a Fourth of July parade was underway, and then went south on Child Lane going into West Bountiful.
West Bountiful residents were beginning to line up for their own city parade, which was to begin at 10:30 a.m., according to Child.
Steenblik said his agency was working to both protect the crowds gathered near Centerville's Main Street and police officers on the scene following reports from other agencies that the man was suicidal.
"We'd received word he might be suicidal by cop," Steenblik said. "He’d been involved in several chases this morning where we terminated and he just kept coming back through this same area, almost looking for officers. We didn’t want him going into where we had hundreds of people on foot on Main Street … a type of situation that could have been very dangerous."
Child added: "At one point, the subject was eastbound on Parrish Lane and was approaching the parade route on Main Street and was turned away by officers within a few hundred feet of the blocked road."
After other roadblocks had been put into place the driver drove west on Parrish Lane about 10:40 a.m. and entered the northbound lanes of Legacy Highway, where a Utah Highway Patrol trooper had deployed tire spikes. The spikes flattened the stolen vehicle's tires, Child said.
Officers made at least two attempts to perform PIT maneuvers during the chase, but McCray was able to continue driving, then turned around going south in the northbound lanes, the chief said.
"The subject ran into a marked Centerville patrol car in a head-on trajectory and then another Centerville officer struck the car, causing it to veer into the median where it came to a rest and started a grass fire," he said.
During attempts to take the subject into custody a UHP trooper fired and shot McCray. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
Officers on scene stopped the grass fire with fire extinguishers during the encounter.
A video that appears to have been taken by motorists who pulled over near the scene on Legacy Highway records what sounds like three shots in succession as other police cars arrived on the scene. What may have been a fourth shot is heard in the video less than 10 seconds later.
Steenblik said McCray was still inside the vehicle when he was shot. Officers have not said what prompted the trooper to fire at the man.
"The thought process is it looked like he wanted to do suicide by cop or force an issue," Steenblik said. "He wanted to drag other people into it, and that’s where our concern was, large crowds and driving through large crowds and hurting them or trying to hurt police or trying to get police to react to him, that was our fear."
"That was very obvious to us that he was trying to engage us," Steenblik said. "We tried as hard as we could not to do that, but finally got this situation where we were forced to take action."
McCray had a history of fleeing from police and drug-related crimes, according to Utah state court records. Most recently, he was convicted of failing to stop at the command of a law enforcer in January, and also in March of 2016. Both times he was sentenced to probation.
He was also convicted of assault in March of 2016 in another case and again in January, according to court records. A warrant was still active Tuesday for his arrest for failing to show up to court in June on the January conviction.
McCray was convicted in March of misdemeanor drug possession. He was scheduled to be back in court for a review of that case in September.
McCray also took a plea in abeyance to a reduced charge of attempted drug distribution in 2009, and was convicted of DUI in one case in 2007 and possession of drug paraphernalia in another, court records state.
Steenblik said the Davis County Protocol Investigation Team has been called in to investigate the shooting death. He also reported no officers were injured during the chases or the confrontation on Legacy Parkway.
The highway remained closed for more than six hours while investigators gathered evidence from the scene.
Contributing: Paul Nelson, Pat Reavy, Ashley Stilson
