Salt Lake City – Officer Kenneth K. Hammond, a six-year veteran of the Ogden department, was having an early Valentine’s Day dinner with his wife on Monday in a Trolley Square restaurant when the shooting started, said Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank.
Hammond, who was carrying a sidearm but did not have extra magazines or equipment, sought the source of the shots and found the gunman. He exchanged fire with 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic and contained him to one area of the mall, the chief said, until a police SWAT team joined in the gun battle.
Police Tuesday said they have no explanation for Talovic’s rampage at the Salt Lake City mall, nor could they offer any information on the teenager.
The expression on Talovic’s face never changed. Not as he walked into the crowded mall. Not as he began to fire.
“He wasn’t yelling or saying anything. He was just loading his gun and blasting away,” said Trolley Square employee Jaron Dansie, who was among scores to witness the 9 minutes of carnage inflicted by Talovic Monday night.
Clad in a trench coat, armed with a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol and wearing a backpack and a bandolier full of ammunition, the Bosnian refugee calmly strode through the mall, systematically slaughtering two men, two women and a 15-year-old girl, police said.
Four others were seriously wounded.
For the hundreds dining at Trolley Square’s restaurants or shopping at its dozens of stores on a pleasant winter’s evening, it became a night of surreal terror. Many of them hid in storage rooms or restrooms. Parents clutched sobbing children. Store employees ducked behind counters. People ran through the converted trolley barns’ winding corridors to escape.
The death toll could have been much higher, police said, except for the heroism of Hammond.
A Salt Lake City School District official said Talovic was enrolled in numerous district schools, most recently for one term of the 2004-05 school year. He withdrew from the district in November 2004, shortly after his 16th birthday.
Burbank said Talovic had some minor brushes with the law, but there are no records of any criminal cases filed against him in local jurisdictions, and a Utah court spokeswoman said Talovic had no juvenile court record.
(optional add at end) About 3,100 Bosnians found safe haven in Utah from the 1992-95 war with the Serbs, which left more than 200,000 people dead and nearly 2 million homeless.
“That you would try to find a life somewhere else, and then take a gun and kill … ,” said Elvis Hadzialijagic, owner of the Bosna restaurant in South Salt Lake. “It’s unbelievable because most families escaped the war. To come from that kind of family, it’s unbelievable.” Monday’s shooting spree began about 6:40 p.m., when Talovic walked into the Trolley Square mall from the west parking deck, police said.
He was carrying a shotgun, pointed upward, according to witnesses.
“It didn’t seem real to me,” said Ron Mason, who was dining at a restaurant there.
Mason stood up from his table and yelled to other customers that a man with a gun was entering the mall.
Desert Edge employee Jeremy Jensen looked down and spotted the gunman – a man he recognized as a brew pub customer from earlier that afternoon.
As Jensen watched from above, another man, on the mall’s ground floor, also spotted the armed man and ran toward the exit. The gunman turned and fired.
“I saw the fire come out of the gun,” said Jensen, who was unsure if the fleeing man was struck.
Perhaps 10 steps further down the corridor, the gunman fired again, this time killing a young woman with a single shot.
“She screamed as she was coming around the corner, and he shot her,” said Marie Smith, a manager at the Bath and Body Works. “I didn’t hear him say anything to her at all.” Witnesses described Talovic as calm and silent throughout the rampage.
Barrett Dodds also saw the shooter from the balcony.
“I heard a shot, I looked down, and I saw the guy shooting into the store,” said Dodds, who owns a store at the mall.
Hammond was on the upper level with Dodds, who led the policeman down a stairway to where he thought the officer could get a view of the gunman.
Dodds said Hammond, who identified himself as a police officer, ducked behind a brick column and exchanged fire with the killer. About the same time, Salt Lake City police officers joined in.
From behind the officer, Dodds saw the gunman fall.
Police worked for hours to locate customers and employees who had barricaded themselves in various store rooms, closets and restaurant kitchens. Investigators interviewed dozens of witnesses.
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. asked state residents to fly their flags at half-staff in memory of the victims of the violence.
“Today is a day of grieving, and tomorrow we, as a community, will begin the healing process,” Huntsman said.
Trolley Square is in a historic area of Salt Lake City that served as territorial and state fairgrounds until 1908 when Union Pacific Railroad magnate E.H. Harriman made it the site for an innovative trolley car system. In 1972, developers renovated the old, mission-style barns and converted them into a collection of boutiques and trendy restaurants.
(Staff writer Michael N. Westley contribution to this story. The Salt Lake Tribune is a member of the ap News Service.)
