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SALT LAKE CITY — An unruly passenger who refused to get off a Greyhound bus was arrested after he attempted to grab an officer's gun multiple times and swallowed a prong from a Taser used to try and subdue him, police say.
Shawn Andrew Clark, 26, was charged Wednesday in 7th District Court with five counts of disarming a police officer, a first-degree felony; assaulting a police officer, a second-degree felony; and seven counts of propelling a substance at an officer, a third-degree felony.
On Sunday, Emery County sheriff's deputies and Utah Highway Patrol troopers were called to the West Winds Pilot Truck Stop in Green River on a report of a man who needed to be removed from a Greyhound bus, according to an Emery County Jail report.
Police say Clark, who has a California driver's license, got off the bus with his girlfriend. But after some arguing, she decided to get back on.
"Shawn got in front of her and knelt down and plead(ed) for her to stay with him," the report states.
When that didn't happen, Clark became agitated and tried to run back on the bus, police wrote. An officer attempted to stop him but was knocked over.
Two officers followed Clark onto the bus and attempted to pull him off, but he began to fight back, the report states.
"At about this same time, Shawn reached around the front of me and grabbed my duty gun and attempted to retrieve it from my holster. I twisted away from him and his grip on my gun was pulled free," the officer wrote in the report.
Throughout the fight, the officer said he deployed his Taser three times while trying to handcuff the man.
"During the struggle, Shawn got one of the Taser probes and swallowed it. Shawn kept hitting himself in the nose with his own fists trying to create injuries to himself. He kept hitting his head on the ground and on the floor of the bus. Shawn was spitting blood and spit on all of us while we were taking him off the bus," the report states.
Four officers were "kicked, hit or attempted to be bitten," according to the report. Six officers and an emergency medical technician allegedly had blood spit on them.
"Shawn attempted to get my firearm a total of three times during the struggle and attempted to get trooper Jensen's firearm a total of two times," the report says. "Each time he had a hold of the gun and would have been able to retrieve it if the holsters were not triple retention holsters."
