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EAGLE MOUNTAIN — A man with a history of committing domestic violence while intoxicated was arrested Thursday when police say he threatened his wife after recently testing positive for COVID-19.
The 31-year-old Eagle Mountain man was arrested for investigation of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, assault on a police officer, criminal mischief, domestic violence assault and making a threat of violence.
Thursday night, a Utah County sheriff’s deputy was responding to a domestic violence call in Eagle Mountain when he spotted the man “running down the middle of the street,” according to a police affidavit.
The man “lifted his right arm in an ice pick fashion” and “made an aggressive forward movement into the headlights of my patrol truck where I could see that he was holding a small knife,” the affidavit states.
“(He) screamed, ‘Kill me now!’ and threw his arms to the side. Based upon my training and experience I believed that (he) was attempting suicide by cop. I did not know how far he was willing to go to get what he wanted. I feared that he would use the weapon against me,” the deputy wrote.
The deputy deployed his Taser, which was successful, and the man was taken into custody.
When investigators found the man’s wife, she informed them that her husband “had been drinking heavily due to a positive COVID-19 reading,” the affidavit states.
The couple went for a drive, but got into an argument. The man pulled out a knife, “held the knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she stopped” before stabbing the dashboard several times, according to the affidavit.
When the wife was eventually able to stop the vehicle, she got out, but her husband chased after her, “grabbing her arm. He then struck his wife several times,” the affidavit states.
In December, the man was charged with going into a business and threatening people with a knife, according to charging documents. A court docket from that case states the man was receiving treatment at an in-patient facility until recently when he “tested positive for COVID-19. The defendant was asked to leave the treatment facility.”
He was also convicted in several domestic violence-related cases, including assault in December, an amended charge of attempted aggravated assault in 2017, and assault in 2014, according to court records.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 or the Utah LINKLine at 1-800-897-5465 for confidential assistance.
