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MURRAY — Five people were arrested following a gang-related shooting and a high-speed chase that reached speeds of 120 mph.
The wild scenario stretched from the Salt Lake-Davis county line through Taylorsville and Murray and put the public in "significant jeopardy," said Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder.
It began just before 2:30 p.m. when a Unified police officer was at a pawn shop, 4090 W. 5415 South, doing a follow-up investigation on another case.
"As our officer was going out, he heard gunfire in the parking lot. He did see what appeared to be a gun battle ensuing in the parking lot between what appeared to be two groups of individuals," Winder said.
Two women were walking out of the pawn shop when the shooting begin.
"There was a champagne-colored Lexus that pulled up," one woman said. "A guy got out and he had a gun, but we're at a pawn shop. We figured, 'Oh, he's just going to come in and pawn it.'"
"(He) leaned out across the hood and fired like five shots," added Brieanna Osborne. "It was terrifying. We were ducking behind stuff because we don't know which way the (shots are) heading, which direction."
When the officer appeared, the two groups ran off. One group of five ran one direction, while another group of five men got into a gold car and drove away. A second officer spotted the gold vehicle a short time later.
"That gold car then led officers on a nearly 35-minute pursuit across multiple jurisdictions," Winder said. "Speeds were in excess of 120 mph on I-15."
Typically, police officers call off high-speed chases that run through pockets of busy traffic or residential neighborhoods because of concern for public safety. But because an officer had actually witnessed a shooting, and other officers initially received information that there could be as many as four shooting victims, Winder said the decision was made to continue the pursuit despite the high speeds.
The chase eventually wound its way into a Murray neighborhood where the fleeing vehicle clipped a trailer being hauled by a Salt Lake County maintenance vehicle at the intersection of 5900 South and 700 West, and then crashed into a nearby pole.
The five people in the vehicle were not injured and were immediately taken into custody, Winder said.
Police booked the car's driver, Eddie Ovalle, 20, into the Salt Lake County Jail, along with Alexander Mejia, 18, and Lauriano Herrera, 19. A 16-year-old male and a 15-year-old male were booked into the Salt Lake Valley Detention Center. All five face possible charges of discharging a firearm, aggravated assault and obstructing justice, while Ovalle faces additional charges for fleeing in the pursuit.
Police did not indicate which of the five is believed to have fired the gun.
Officers from multiple jurisdictions assisted in the case. At one point, the sheriff said there were four crime scenes strung out across the valley: One was at the pawn shop, a second was at the crash scene, and a third was in Taylorsville where officers watched a gun being thrown out of the fleeing gold vehicle and recovered it. The fourth scene was in West Jordan where police pulled over a vehicle driven by the five victims who fled the scene.
Detectives said the five men, who were between the ages of 18 and 20, were interviewed by police and released as victims in the shooting. Unified police said the men were hiding behind the vehicle, which received several bullet holes.
At the pawn shop parking lot, a stray bullet hit a 46-year-old man sitting in a nearby vehicle, Winder said. The injuries to the man who was shot were not life-threatening, he said.
The sheriff said it was "extremely fortunate" that no one else, either officers, members of the public or the fleeing suspects, were seriously injured.
Three schools in the Granite School District — Arcadia Elementary, Truman Elementary and Frost Elementary — were placed on lockdown for about 15 minutes, according to the district.
