Off-duty officer shrugs off 'heroic' label

"He took a shot at me. It was quite a distance. I was still up on the second tier and decided I needed to get to a safer place," Hammond said. "I went around the west side and fired another round and that's when I just lay flat on the ground."

Hammond said he lost sight of Talovic for a brief time. It was then the officer became worried about the escalators behind him and whether the gunman would get the drop on him.

"That's when I noticed a uniformed Salt Lake City police officer standing on the lower level about equal with me," he said. "It was kind of tense for a few seconds because I was standing up there with a gun in my hand."

Shouting down that he was an off-duty Ogden police officer, he convinced the officer that he wasn't a threat. Hammond ran down the escalators and met the officer — and the gunman, who was in a store.

"At that point I kind of fanned off to the left a little bit where I did take shots at the suspect," he said. "There was a brief moment after I fired my last two shots. There was probably five or 10 seconds of silence. I did hear what sounded like rapid fire from a machine-gun type weapon. I looked around the corner and I could see glass falling and I could tell the suspect was down."

When Hammond and the other officer rushed up to Talovic's body they saw SWAT officers placing him in handcuffs. Hammond said he did not know if he or any other officer killed Talovic. Ogden police declined to say how many times Hammond fired on Talovic. The shooting itself is under a policy review investigation by the Ogden Police Department.

Hammond said he had eight rounds in his gun when he engaged Tolovic. By the time he reached the first floor, witnesses said, Hammond was running out of bullets.

"The Ogden city guy says 'Hey man, I've only got six shots,"' Dodds recalled. "I was upstairs. There was nothing I could do. Just then the cops (came) in."

Hammond said in the six years he's been a cop for Ogden police, he's had to chase suspects who pointed guns at him — but he's never been shot at before. Hammond said that he kept the gunman busy, giving Salt Lake City police time to get where they needed to be and stop Talovic.

"I think he's a brave officer," Greiner said.

Hammond said his first concern was for his pregnant wife.

"I'm on a Valentine's Day date with my wife," Hammond said. "I'm not ready for that. ... I'm not expecting that. My first concern was her, getting her away. She's pregnant and I didn't want her anywhere near that. The second thing that I was worried about was more possible victims."

When they reunited after the shooting, Sarita said she embraced her husband.

"I think it's very heroic," she said.

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E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com