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SALT LAKE CITY — A Salt Lake police officer who fired a shot at a vehicle as a wanted man drove away more than a year ago was not legally justified in using deadly force.
That was the conclusion announced Monday by Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill. But Gill has decided not to file any criminal charges against officer Brandon Rammell.
During the Nov. 3, 2018, incident, Rammell spotted Robert Craig Ortega, 28, at a Chevron gas station near 3300 South and 1100 East. Ortega had a warrant out for his arrest for a parole violation. He was convicted of attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child in 2011 and sentenced to three years to life at the Utah State Prison.
But when Rammell attempted to take Ortega into custody, he resisted. The confrontation was recorded on the officer’s body camera.
“Sir, I’m not doing anything. No, I’m not doing anything,” Ortega is heard saying as he continues to walk away from the officer.
“Do you wanna get tased?” the officer says in the video, shortly before taking out his Taser.
Rammell deployed his Taser, but it had no effect. Ortega then ran to his car and got in through the passenger door while Rammell stood near the driver’s door.
Ortega continued to disobey the officer’s commands to get out of the car. As Ortega is going through the car’s glovebox, Rammell unholstered his gun and pointed it at him through the window.
”You wanna get (expletive) shot?” the officer asks him in the video.
”No, man. I don’t. Back up please,” Ortega responds.
When Rammell realizes that Ortega is not looking for a weapon, he reholsters his gun. He then opens the driver’s door and attempts to pull Ortega out of the car.
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“My concern was that if he got into the vehicle and started it, if I was anywhere near that car, he was going to take me with him into that intersection,” Rammell told the district attorney’s office, according to Gill’s final report. “Watching the video, it’s only a few seconds, I think, but in my mind it was a couple of minutes of feeling like I’m going to be thrown into this intersection, and I’m never going to walk again because I’m going to fall out and hit something at a dangerous speed.”
Rammell believed that he was still partially in the vehicle when he fired his shot, Gill said.
“He was very forthcoming. And he still believed that when he made the decision to fire that he was in the car,” Gill said.
But the district attorney said that in this case, Rammell was “factually mistaken.”
Based on the officer’s body camera and several witnesses, Rammell was clearly standing outside the car and was out of the way of being hit when he drew his gun for a second time and fired, hitting the door frame as it sped away. The use of deadly force could not be justified in this case, “because the car was already moving when officer Rammell fired. He was not in a zone of danger of being harmed by the vehicle,” Gill said.
However, Gill said he cannot discredit Rammell’s belief that he was still in the car.
“In this case, we considered the context in which officer Rammell fired his weapon at Mr. Ortega,” he said. “Although officer Rammell said he feared for his life, a belief we cannot doubt, the basis of the belief and the basis on which he acted is factually inconsistent with the observable facts. While officer Rammell acted upon a mistaken belief, there is no evidence that he did so to intentionally violate the law.”
Gill believes that as soon as the car was started, Rammell’s body reactively moved out of the way. But mentally, he was already preparing to draw his weapon and fire.
“His body acted before his mind could act,” Gill said.
Because of that, he said there was no criminal intent and no criminal charges will be filed.
No one was injured by the shot. Ortega was arrested without incident two days later.
Rammell, who had been brought back to active duty since the shooting, was placed on administrative leave again on Nov. 21 when Gill informed the department about his decision.
The Salt Lake City Police Department will now complete its own internal affairs review of the incident and the Civilian Review Board will also conduct its investigation. Both of those reports will then be submitted to the chief’s office for consideration.
“Based on our policy, after the initial preliminary command review, officer Rammell was brought back to work pending the results of the D.A.’s findings. We also had over a dozen officers on admin leave, which was crippling our workforce,” the department said in a prepared statement Monday. “He was on admin leave for over five months.”
