A Provo man has been charged with a handful of felonies after an alleged assault on an officer who tried to stop him from stealing from a donation box.
The man, 40, had climbed into a food pantry donation box in Springville on Friday afternoon, his feet jutting from the top when an officer spotted him.
The man complied when the officer asked him to climb out, according to an arrest document. But while the officer was attempting to handcuff the man, he broke free from the officer’s grip and punched the officer in the eye, fracturing his orbital bone.
The man continued to strike the officer in the face, causing severe lacerations, the document states.
The man was stopped when a passer-by saw the confrontation and intervened by pulling a gun on the attacker, police have said.
The attacker fled and tried to break into a house, according to the document. He then jumped over two ATVs, tearing their protective covers. He was found about 30 minutes after the confrontation, hiding under a flatbed truck across the street.
He was arrested without further incident and was booked into Utah County jail.
The man was charged Tuesday with a first-degree-felony charge each of aggravated assault targeting law enforcement with bodily injury, aggravated escape and aggravated robbery. He is also charged with second-degree-felony obstructing justice, and with misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief and failure to stop at the command of an officer.
The case is assigned to 4th District Judge Derek Pullan. No court date had been scheduled as of Tuesday night, but a letter the man’s father wrote to Pullan says the 40-year-old defendant has paranoid schizophrenia.
The man’s father said his son started exhibiting schizophrenic behavior when he was 20 and is a patient at Wasatch Mental Health. The letter says the man was committed to the facility for several years, but that he has been living in an apartment in Spanish Fork since 2014.
The father said his son has a tendency to lose his temper and yell at people, but he has never seen his son be physically violent before.
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