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ROY, Utah (AP) -- Weber County attorney Dee Smith says a police officer was justified in the fatal shooting of a club-wielding man in a Sept. 16 raid that turned up a half-ounce of marijuana.
Tuesday's ruling came after family members said the raid caught 45-year-old Todd E. Blair of Roy by surprise in his basement. They say Blair probably thought he was confronting burglars.
Smith says Ogden police Sgt. Troy Burnett had little time to react to a man brandishing a golf club and was justified in firing three times.
A sister, Tauna Blair Doesberg, has told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden that her brother was a gentle handyman who took in strangers and once paid to fly a friend across country to escape a life of drug addiction. She says he wasn't selling meth or heroin as alleged in a search warrant and died with $4 in his pocket.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
