Utah shooting: ‘Disgusting we have to worry about police,’ aunt says

Darrien Hunt’s family still doesn’t know why he was carrying his brother’s sword around -- a metallic replica with a dulled edge they’d bought several years ago at a Chinese novelty shop.

Hunt, the child of a black father and white mother, was a fan of the animated TV series “Afro Samurai,” whose main character is a black swordsman voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. Hunt’s aunt, Cindy Moss, said the music-obsessed 22-year-old, “a kid still at heart,” may have had a reason for carrying the replica around.

“We think he was looking for a job that day,” Moss told the Los Angeles Times. “He got dressed up, took off, thought he could win a job at Panda Express by doing dance moves with a ninja-katana-sword thing.”

Hunt died Sept. 10 after officers in Saratoga Springs, Utah, who had received a call about his carrying a sword in public, confronted him and then shot him to death.

Hunt’s case became the latest fatal police shooting to trigger national scrutiny after independent autopsy results on Saturday raised questions about officials’ account of the confrontation, in which they said Hunt had lunged at officers with the sword.

Hunt’s family says those autopsy results show he was shot six times, including once in the back, and they want to know whether race was a factor -- a question that, Moss said, leaves Hunt’s mother afraid for her surviving son and two daughters. The city is predominantly white.

“I watch my sister now in panic every time the kids walk out the door,” said Moss, growing emotional as she talked of Susan Hunt and her children. “I wouldn’t want them to leave my sight after all this, but we can’t lock them down because we’re worried somebody might kill them. It’s disgusting we have to worry about police officers.”

In a statement, Saratoga Springs Police Chief Andrew Burton said he could not provide more information about the incident because it was under investigation by the county. He also apologized for remarks posted on the department’s official Facebook account that criticized the media for pursuing ratings instead of facts after Hunt’s death.

“We ask the media and the public for patience and understanding of our position and lack of ability to answer all the questions posed at this time,” Burton said.

It could take at least six weeks for investigators to determine whether the two still-unidentified Sarasota Springs officers wrongfully killed Hunt, an official told The Times on Monday. Both officers have been placed on paid leave pending the result of a county investigation.

Tim Taylor, chief deputy in the Utah County Attorney’s Office, which is reviewing the case, told The Times it would take that long to get full autopsy results back from the state’s medical examiner office, which declined to comment Monday.

Taylor also said the claim that Hunt lunged at officers with the sword “actually came from a couple witnesses there at the scene.”

The incident between Hunt and the officers appeared to involve two locations, Taylor told The Times. The first encounter happened outside a credit union, he said, where Hunt may have pulled his sword on the officers and a single shot may have been fired.

“I don’t know if he was hit in that initial encounter,” Taylor said, adding that Hunt was killed about 100 yards away, outside the Panda Express.

Taylor said that he didn’t know if the officers had body cameras or dashboard cameras, and that investigators were collecting surveillance video from nearby businesses.

Moss, who has been speaking on behalf of Hunt’s family, told The Times that the independent autopsy requested by the family showed that Hunt was shot twice in the hip, once in the right wrist, once in the shoulder, once in the back of his left arm and once in the back.

The family’s attorney declined to identify the pathologist who conducted the procedure or to provide a copy of the autopsy report to The Times.

Moss said that Hunt did not have psychological problems and called him a “bright, smart kid” who was “not violent.” She said he had been arrested in January after getting in a fight with his sister and two of her friends, but that because he was an adult, he was the only one charged. Moss said Hunt had taken a plea in abeyance, a move that allows charges to be cleared after a year of good behavior.

On a Facebook page under Hunt’s name, there are occasionally-cryptic status updates such as “I wanted to share my everything with her,” with a couple of older posts from earlier in the summer directed against “dirty” cops. “Never had a cop help me ... can’t ever tell who the good guys are. Kinda sucks,” read one post.

Moss said her nephew liked to “play games on Nintendo,” go rock climbing, and listen to the Kansas City, Mo., rapper Tech N9ne. “He liked to spit some lyrics,” Moss said with a laugh.

Moss, who is white, said she once believed racial bias didn’t really exist anymore in America, especially in Utah; but after the shooting, and after she saw someone following her surviving nephew around, she said her perspective had changed.

“It seems like if it’s anyone different, we’re all terrified, we want to watch them,” Moss said.

The family has since set up a memorial Facebook page for Hunt, which contains links to a fundraiser to help the family pay for Hunt’s burial and a petition for police departments to add civilian review boards.

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