Police gun down alleged hostage taker in Salt Lake

Police shot and killed a man today who had taken a woman hostage near Green Street and 700 South and yelled to officers that he would not be taken alive.

The standoff shut down the area to traffic as police surrounded the small rental home where a man held a woman at gunpoint.

"The suspect had his arm around the neck of the female" and pointed a gun pointed to her head, said Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Bedard. "He said he wanted to die. He wasn't going to go back to prison."

When an officer had a clear shot at the man, Bedard said, he took it, killing the man. The hostage was unharmed.

The incident began at 12:20 p.m., police said, when a man tried to carjack the parked vehicle of Jace and Pat Snell, who had come from Provo to visit their daughter nearby.

After 67-year-old Jace Snell had gotten out of his car he was knocked to the ground by a man who put a gun to Snell's chest and demanded the keys, as Pat looked on from inside the vehicle, according to the couple's daughter.

"My father said, 'I just wanted to get hold of him and wring his neck,'" the daughter, Tamara Snell, said.

Jace Snell did manage to kick the man who fled on foot. Snell then called police.

Michael Proud was watching television in his apartment when he heard a noise and looked out his window. "I saw this guy standing behind the porch looking out onto the street," Proud said. "I saw this chrome-plated pistol; it looked like a 9 mm."

Proud called 911 as he watched the man. "He looked intense," Proud said, describing the man as white, in his 40s with gray stubble beard, wearing a baseball cap, long sleeved blue shirt, jeans and white tennis shoes.

The description matched that given by Jace Snell when he called police.

The man ran off and Proud alerted his neighbors.

About 12:47 p.m. police responded to a row of multi-colored rental homes on Green Street and 700 South where an armed man had taken another man and a woman hostage. By the time police arrived the man had escaped, police said.

Meanwhile, the Snells had lunch with their daughter and returned to Provo before police called and asked the couple to return for an interview with police, Tamara Snell said.

"He's a pretty tough old bird," she said of her father.

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