A man was hospitalized Tuesday night after a shooting involving a law enforcement officer for the Utah Department of Natural Resources.
While the officer was on patrol in Duchesne City, he stopped a man whom Duchesne County officers were working to locate for erratic driving — and for another reason that the state agency did not disclose. The traffic stop occurred around 10 p.m., Todd Royce, chief of DNR’s Division of Law Enforcement, said Wednesday.
Shots were fired during the traffic stop, the agency said in a statement. Royce said he could not confirm whether or not the injured man was armed. He also said he did not know if there was an exchange of gunfire or if only the officer shot, adding that those details are under investigation.
The man who was stopped, who the agency said it would not identify, was injured. He was first treated on the scene, then taken to a local hospital and later transported to a hospital in the Salt Lake Valley.
Royce said Wednesday morning he did not know the injured man’s current condition, but that his “understanding is that the injuries are not life-threatening.”
The natural resources officer involved was not injured.
The officer has been placed on administrative leave while the state investigates the shooting.
Natural resources officers are “fully certified police officers,” Royce said Wednesday. “We train extensively for situations like this, just like any other police department does.”
The Division of Law Enforcement, under the Utah Department of Natural Resources, was created in January. The natural resource officers in the division come from four department divisions that oversee wildlife, state parks, outdoor recreation, forestry, fire and state lands.
Each natural resource officer is tasked with patrolling 385,000 acres to protect Utah’s wildlife, trails and waterways, according to the department’s website.
Before Division of Law Enforcement was established, the officer involved in the shooting worked in the Division of Wildlife Resources.