Salt Lake police arrest man accused of pointing gun at officers

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Gloire Seba, 30, was arrested in Salt Lake City for allegedly assaulting officers.
• He allegedly pointed a realistic-looking BB gun at police while laughing.
• Seba was arrested for investigation of multiple charges including drug possession and giving false information.

SALT LAKE CITY — A 30-year-old man who allegedly pointed a realistic-looking gun at police while laughing was arrested Tuesday in Salt Lake City.

Gloire Seba was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of four counts of assault on an officer, drug possession, use of drug paraphernalia, being a restricted person in possession of a gun, giving false information to police and consuming alcohol in a public place.

On Tuesday, while police were involved in a separate investigation near 100 South and 300 East, a man was seen "walking back and forth along the sidewalk," according to a police booking affidavit.

"The male was wearing what appeared to be a bullet-resistant-style vest. Throughout the investigation, the male repeatedly approached and interrupted officers by asking unrelated questions and interjecting himself into the ongoing investigation," the affidavit states.

The man eventually walked into a nearby vehicle and got in.

"I then observed the male raise a silver-colored handgun above the roofline of the vehicle and point it in the direction of officers who were actively conducting the investigation," the arresting officer wrote in the affidavit. "The male briefly lowered the firearm before raising it again. I then observed the male point and brandish the firearm in the direction of officers while laughing."

Police converged on the vehicle and ordered the man at gunpoint to get out. A gun was located inside the car.

"The firearm was a silver-colored, 1911-style weapon. There were no immediately visible markings indicating that the weapon was a BB gun or other imitation firearm. During the subsequent investigation, it was determined that the weapon had been altered or designed to closely resemble a legitimate firearm," according to the affidavit, which noted the weapon was ultimately determined to be a BB gun.

When questioned, the man, identified as Seba, "stated that he was 'just showing us the barrel to prove it wasn't loaded.' The male made several additional unusual statements regarding the firearm and his manipulation of it, including statements suggesting that he was attempting to demonstrate that the weapon was not real," the affidavit states.

"Although the firearm was later determined to fire metal BB projectiles, its appearance and operation were sufficiently similar to a real handgun that officers reasonably believed it to be a lethal firearm at the time it was pointed at them," the police affidavit continues. "The defendant's actions were not merely passive possession of a weapon. He actively displayed and pointed the weapon toward officers during an ongoing investigation, creating a potentially deadly confrontation."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Pat Reavy

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops-and-courts beat.