Four people have been charged in connection with an April 15 shooting that left two men dead, but the alleged gunman himself is not being charged.
Tiffani Papach, 40, Kendra Mitchell, 39, Kevin Thrower, 57, and Christopher Herschberg, 44, have all been charged with obstruction of justice, while Mitchell and Papach have also been charged with aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery in Utah’s Third District Court.
The aggravated robbery and burglary charges are first-degree felonies, typically carrying sentences between 5 years and life in prison. The obstruction charge is a second-degree felony, which usually carry a sentence between 1 and 15 years in prison.
According to court documents filed Thursday by the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office, the man who presumably shot and killed Phillip Kioa, 40, and Sofeni Heimuli, 36, said he did so in fear for his life.
While police have released the identities of Kioa and Heimuli, the charging documents only refer to them by their initials and do not explicitly say the alleged shooter — who was not named in the charging document — shot them.
Court documents say the alleged gunman checked into a room in Salt Lake City’s Comfort Inn on April 15. He arrived with Mitchell, who was acting as an escort. But, the indictment says, he told officers “he didn’t like her and asked her to leave,” offering to pay for her Uber charge.
Mitchell wanted him to pay $100, and the man told investigators that he felt threatened when Mitchell called someone and “asked for ‘those boys’ to come over,” the indictment says.
Court documents say that Mitchell told police she called Papach because the man “was dodging payment.”
According to the indictment, Herschberg told investigators Papach brought him, Kioa and Heimuli to the hotel to try to get money from the man, though both he and Papach both initially told officers differently.
Herschberg told officers that when he realized what they were going to do, he “didn’t want no part of it,” court documents say.
According to court documents, the man renting the hotel room said he refrained from answering the door when someone knocked claiming to be security, but opened it to put Mitchell’s belongings in the hall after receiving a call from the front desk. That’s when two men came in.
When the other two men made their way into the room, Herschberg told investigators, he was outside the hotel “playing on his phone,” and Mitchell and Papach were by the room’s window, the indictment says.
The man renting the room told investigators that “the first guy had a gun, put the gun in his face, pistol-whipped him, and hit him with their fists” before taking his car keys, according to court documents.
Then, the indictment says, he noticed the gun on the floor and “defended his life.” As he called authorities after, a woman was trying to climb in through the window, the document says.
Herschberg told officials that after the gunshots, Papach had kicked through the window and Herschberg went to grab her before they drove off, according to the charging document.
Mitchell left for an apartment complex, according to the indictment, where Thrower told her not to tell anyone what had happened. The document says officers spoke with Thrower and Mitchell in the apartment complex parking lot after a rideshare driver told them he drove a distraught woman there. According to the indictment, Thrower told them Mitchell had headed toward a different building and they claimed that Mitchell, who was standing right by him, was someone else.
