A man who was hospitalized for days — after allegedly shooting at tow truck operators and exchanging gunfire with Salt Lake City police officers — is facing 22 felony counts, prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Ramon Rojas-Huerta, 44, is now Salt Lake County jail. Before he was booked there, he was in Intermountain Health Center’s intensive care unit where he was treated after being shot by Salt Lake City police officers who were pursuing him.
The documents say on June 29 around 10:30 p.m., tow truck driver Marcus Spikes tried to tow Ramon Rojas-Huerta’s white van from the Burger King parking lot at 1660 W. North Temple, but instead unhooked and left it after Rojas-Huerta agreed to pay him.
Then, as Spikes was preparing a receipt, Rojas-Huerta quickly backed his van into the back of the tow truck, court documents say, before leaving the parking lot and shooting at Spikes and his coworker, Joel Loza Arevalo — and hitting the truck’s front driver-side tire.
Spikes and Arevalo followed Rojas-Huerta to the Chevron gas station at 4025 W. 1820 S, court documents say. That’s when the tow truck crew stopped and reported to police that Rojas-Huerta was continuing west on California Avenue.
Then, as Spikes was putting air into the tow truck’s tire, he said Rojas-Huerta drove by and shot at him. He tried to follow Rojas-Huerta, the documents say, but stopped when he saw police pursuing him.
Police chased Rojas-Huerta north on Bangerter Highway, where court documents say he shot at police and they shot back. He continued east on Interstate 80, where officers tried several times to stop his vehicle. Eventually, the documents say, “one officer rammed their patrol vehicle into the back of the white van,” bringing it to a stop, and five police officers shot at Rojas-Huerta from their cars.
Spikes told investigators he has an agreement to tow cars left in the Burger King parking lot for more than 10 minutes after 9 p.m. “due to the high drug activity.” He said he saw “Rojas-Huerta do what he believes was a drug exchange while in the parking lot after exiting the van” when he handed cash to another person there.
He also told police that Rojas-Huerta came up to him “while the van was on the tow truck and was acting erratically,” according to court documents. After trying to calm him down, he said Rojas-Huerta paid him $160 to take the van off the tow truck, which he thought was strange because he had only asked for $100.
Rojas-Huerta told investigators a different story, according to court documents.
He told investigators he had stopped at Burger King to get food before going home, and was in the van when the tow truck driver started hooking it up. According to documents, Rojas-Huerta said the tow truck driver “threatened to blow his head off” and demanded $180 to unhook the van.
Then, according to the documents, Rojas-Huerta said he saw the tow truck following him, and fired shots “to show he had a gun and was able to defend himself.” He also said he didn’t think the officers pursuing him were really police, so he fired several shots in the air toward their vehicles “to show them he could defend himself and get the police to back off.”
The owner of the van later told officers that Rojas-Huerta, an employee, wasn’t authorized to use the van outside of work hours and didn’t have permission to drive it that night, court documents say. The van was totaled.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office Monday charged Rojas-Huerta with 25 counts:
• Five counts of assault on a peace officer with a dangerous weapon, a second-degree felony.
• One count of property damage, a third-degree felony.
• Two counts of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony.
• 12 counts of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony.
• One count of failure to respond to an officer’s signal to stop, a third-degree felony.
• One charge of unlawful control of a vehicle used to commit a felony, a third-degree felony.
• One charge of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs for the second time in 10 years, a class A misdemeanor.
• One count of property damage or destruction, a class B misdemeanor.
• One count of reckless driving, a class B misdemeanor.
Second-degree felonies in Utah typically carry a sentence of 1-to-15 years in prison. Third-degree felonies typically carry a sentence of up to 5 years in prison.
Rojas-Huerta’s initial appearance before 3rd District Judge Adam Mow is scheduled for Thursday.
“The prevalence of gun violence in our community is unacceptable,” Sim Gill, Salt Lake County’s district attorney, said in a statement Tuesday. “Our community deserves to be safe when they go out to eat, or are simply driving on our roads.”