Utah SWAT Team Kills Drug Fugitive in Stand-Off

by Phillip Smith
StoptheDrugWar.org
Jun. 09, 2014

A man wanted on drug and other arrest warrants who barricaded himself inside a West Haven auto body shop was shot and killed Wednesday afternoon when he allegedly pointed a weapon at SWAT officers after a stand-off lasting several hours. Kristopher Chase Simmons, 35, becomes the 21st person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, citing police sources, Ogden police detectives attempting to arrest Simmons on "several drug-related and evading police felony warrants" located him at the auto body shop, but he and a woman with him fled into the shop, and he barricaded himself in a car.

What later happened to the woman is unclear (see below).

SWAT officers were called to the scene and hours of negotiations ensued, but when negotiations proved fruitless, SWAT officer entered the building.

"Simmons pointed a gun at the officers and two of them returned fire, wounding Simmons," Sgt. Lane Findlay of the Weber County Sheriff's Office wrote in a press statement Wednesday night.

But one commenter on a Standard-Examiner story about the incident and Simmons' criminal history had a decidedly different take on what went down:

"My friend is the 'mystery girl' the cops speak of that they could not locate or didn't know if she was real. She was real and she was inside hiding during the stand off and saw everything," wrote the commenter, who identified herself as Mona Little. "SIMMONS DID NOT HAVE A GUN. SIMMONS HAD BARRICADED HIMSELF INSIDE A CAR IN THE SHOP AND HAD A BLANKET OVER HIM. THE COPS SHOT HIM POINT BLANK IN THE CHEST AS HE WAS BEGGING THEM NOT TO! AFTER HE WAS MURDERED THE POLICE SET UP THE STAGE WITH 11 REHEARSALS, REFUSING TO LET THE CSI IN UNTILL THEY PRACTICED WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO CLAIM HAPPENED AND GOT ALL THEIR DUCKS IN A ROW, EVEN RE-ARRANGING THE CRIME SCENE TO WORK IN THEIR FAVOR!!! THIS IS MURDER BUT WHO WILL POLICE THE POLICE? THIS IS THE TRUTH."

Sgt. Findlay told the Standard-Examiner yesterday that a detective had indeed seen a woman, who police believed was an associate of Simmons, make her way into the building while others were being evacuated, but that there had been no sign of her since.

"It's not certain where she went," he said. "She could possibly have slipped out."

Police don't know who she is and she could be difficult to identify, he said. "I know there are detectives working on it."