Body-camera videos of 'suicidal' armed man killed by Salt Lake City police released

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Salt Lake City police shot Thomas Nelson on May 22 after he brandished a gun.
• Nelson, 33, reportedly expressed suicidal intentions and threatened neighbors before the incident.
• Four officers fired shots; Nelson was pronounced dead. An investigation is ongoing.

SALT LAKE CITY — A man shot and killed by Salt Lake City police two weeks ago after refusing to put his gun down had told neighbors he was suicidal.

"He wants someone to kill him," one woman is heard telling a responding officer in body camera video. "He said he might have explosives, but I think it's more a threat than reality."

On May 22, Thomas Nelson, 33, was shot and killed while brandishing a gun and standing on his front porch near 150 W. Lucy Avenue. On Friday, Salt Lake City police released six body camera videos — some less than 30 seconds long — from officers who responded to the scene and the initial 911 call.

"It's scary, he's been threatening to kill himself," a neighbor tells a 911 dispatcher while explaining that Nelson had just brandished a gun at a neighbor. "He's told everybody he's going to kill himself today."

Additionally, the caller says Nelson gave his dogs to a neighbor to hold onto, that the gun was now in his waistband and that police had been at his residence recently.

In body-camera footage, officers are seen taking cover behind a truck parked in the street in front of Nelson's residence.

"He's coming out, he's coming out," an officer is heard saying calmly shortly after arriving at the scene.

"Hey, let me see your hands," another officer yells at Nelson.

But almost immediately, multiple officers start yelling, "Put the gun down."

Moments later, police fired 7 to 8 shots. Salt Lake City police say four officers fired their weapons after Nelson "racked the slide of the gun and then moved the gun upwards." Nelson was pronounced dead at the scene. No one else was injured and it was not immediately known if Nelson fired any shots.

In one body camera video, an officer takes a pair of witnesses aside prior to the shooting, who again say that Nelson is suicidal and possibly either intoxicated or "heavily medicated" or both. One woman says she isn't sure if Nelson's gun is real.

Not long after, the officer can be heard telling others on his police radio that Nelson "wants to do suicide by cop" and starts walking back to where the others had taken cover. Nelson walks out of his house, and the shots from the fatal confrontation are heard.

The officers who shot at Nelson have been placed on standard paid leave pending an investigation by the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office.

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.