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SALT LAKE CITY — Two Salt Lake police officers were legally justified in shooting a man apparently having a mental health crisis after he pointed what appeared to be a real gun at them.
That was the conclusion announced Friday by the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office.
On Nov. 8, 2022, Salt Lake police officers Nicholas Greenfield and Taryn Culverwell were asked to assist Mobile Crisis Outreach Team members from Huntsman Mental Health Institute who offer community-based intervention to individuals experiencing a crisis. The team, which includes a licensed clinical social worker and a certified peer support specialist, is called whenever someone may be having mental health issues.
Family members for George Gulla had "planned an intervention" for him and had contacted the outreach team for assistance to remove him from the house. In the week leading up to the November confrontation, Gulla claimed he had been using methamphetamine and was threatening to "kill people," according to charging documents.
About 11:45 p.m, outreach team members and Gulla's sister entered the garage near 900 East and 1700 South where he was staying while the two officers stood nearby.
Crisis workers talked with Gulla for nearly eight minutes. During the conversation, Gulla made statements such as, "I don't like being woken up like this," "This is ridiculous," and at one point "groaned loudly" and expressed his displeasure with the situation, according to the final report released Friday from District Attorney Sim Gill.
About eight minutes after entering the garage, Gulla stepped away from the bed he was on, "grabbed a gun off a shelf and raised it,"the report states. Greenfield yelled "Gun!" and both officers fired a total of 20 shots.
"(He) looks straight at me, right in my eyes, and then he's sitting on his butt and just reaches like really fast. Like, he's trying to get a one up on me," Greenfield later explained during the police shooting investigation. "He reached, grabbed the gun, and then immediately pulled it back to him. Like it was so fast. If I blinked, I would've missed it. It was just that fast.
"I was thinking that I need to stop him from shooting me, my partner or anybody else in the room with me," Greenfield continued.
The "gun" Gulla pointed was later determined to be a pellet gun. He told investigators that he "wasn't thinking clearly" and that he reached for the pellet gun "because he felt cornered, trapped and violated" by the presence of the officers, Gill's report states.
Despite being shot 11 times, he survived his injuries and was charged in 3rd District Court with with two counts of assault on a police officer, a second-degree felony, and three counts of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony. He was convicted on April 22 by pleading "no contest" to two reduced counts of assault on a police officer, a third-degree felony, as part of a plea deal.
In May, Gulla received a suspended prison sentence and was ordered to serve to what amounted to 10 additional days in jail on top of the time he had already been incarcerated. He was placed on three years of probation with several conditions, including receiving a mental health evaluation and completing any recommended treatment, court documents state.
