Font ResizeBrian Cardall had already been shocked once with a Taser.
Sitting naked on the side of a southern Utah highway, he apparently wasn't registering a string of commands thrown at him by Hurricane police Officer Ken Thompson.
Thompson wanted Cardall to "stay down on the ground." But the 32-year-old man, who was experiencing a bipolar episode, started to get up.
So Thompson did what he thought was right. "I pulled the trigger again," Thompson said in a transcript of his interview with investigators following Cardall's June 9 death.
Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap included the interview transcript with a statement Thursday in which he announced Thompson was justified in using force on
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The man was running and agitated on State Road 59 near Hurricane when he ignored officers' commands to stop.
Belnap's statement said Thompson's decision to twice deploy a Taser on Cardall was legal under Utah law and the Hurricane Police Department's use of force policy.
He "responded to a tense, uncertain and rapidly unfolding situation in a manner consistent with his training," Belnap said. "He did not intend, believe or foresee [anything that] would seriously injure or cause the death of Brian Cardall."
Belnap reviewed findings by the Washington County Critical Incident Task Force formed to independently collect evidence in the case. He also sought advice from the Utah Attorney General's
He called Cardall's death a tragic event that prompted people to "question what happened and search for alternatives that could have avoided the tragedy."
Thompson's description of the tragedy that unfolded began when he and Hurricane Police Chief Lynn Excell told a naked Cardall to get to the ground and "tried to get him to comply so we could take him into custody and figure out what was going on and he just wouldn't comply," according to the interview transcript.
"He'd kind of take a couple of steps toward the chief, take a couple of steps back off the road towards the car and his wife and then a couple of steps toward me," Thompson said.
"He told me at one point, 'This is a hostage situation -- don't shoot him.' And he was looking at the chief like I was going to shoot the chief."
Thompson told investigators Cardall wouldn't comply with his commands and that Cardall, who was unarmed, came at him.
"So I [stunned] him," Thompson said. "And he went down kind of went off to my left away from the road. And then he tried to get back up and so I [stunned] him again."
Thompson said Anna Cardall was telling her husband to "get down on the ground" and "do what they say."
He described the scene with Cardall moving back and forth between his wife, the chief and himself as "chaos." Thompson said he chose to deploy the Taser on Cardall when the man came at him in what he perceived was a more direct manner. "He was coming right at me ... right before I [stunned] him he went from you know -- 10,15 or 20 feet to 5 feet just like that."
Thompson said he understood a Taser to be a "less than lethal" weapon that could "help bring an uncontrollable person under control, without, you know, without killing them."
The transcript also includes an interview with Excell, who verified Thompson's depiction of events.
Excell and attorney Peter Stirba, who represents Hurricane police, on Thursday called the investigation into Thompson's actions "thorough." They are pleased Thompson was vindicated, as they believed he would be based on the evidence.
They called Cardall's death a "tragedy" and expressed their condolences.
"I want everybody to know that I was there. I know what happened at that scene. The evidence in this case clearly shows that the officers were justified and that their actions were reasonable under that circumstance," Excell said.
"This is a tragedy ... this affected a lot of people, not only the Cardall family, but also the officers involved and their families as well."
