SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office has determined an officer-involved shooting in May was not legally justified.

Prosecutors will now decide whether to file criminal charges against the police officer for his use of deadly force.

On May 8, Salt Lake City police officer Matthew Giles fired eight times at a juvenile in a stolen car attempting to flee police near 1600 West and 400 South. The juvenile had already been involved in a hit-and-run accident, had purposely rammed a police car, was speeding and trying to avoid police.

In his statement to prosecutors, the officer said he feared for his life as he saw the car drive toward him. Giles told prosecutors the driver was about 20 feet away when he fired his police rifle.

"The vehicle was directly in front of me and was coming directly at me. ... It was very, moving very fast. I could see the vehicle wasn't trying to swerve to miss me at all," he told investigators. "It wasn't swerving. Seeing that the vehicle was coming at me at a very high rate of speed, I feared for my safety, I feared for my life, knowing that if I got hit by this vehicle, I, my life could be, I could die or I could get seriously injured."

One of Giles' shots went through the juvenile's arm and entered his torso, the D.A.'s report states. The bullet was fired through the driver's side window.

But District Attorney Sim Gill said the officer's statement and the factual evidence did not add up.

Even if the car was moving 20 mph, Gill said the officer would have had to fire his weapon eight times in barely a second if the vehicle was just 20 feet away.

"His statement was not supported by the evidence," Gill said. "Based on what he had presented, we could not justify the shooting."

Gill added, "This is not an indication of any one particular department or law enforcement in general. This was a very specific analysis about an individual."

Gill would only say the teen was under 18 years old, and he declined to talk about the boy's criminal history.

In a prepared statement, Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank did not make mention of whether he agreed or disagreed with the D.A.'s decision.

"The police department will now conduct an internal review of the officer's actions. Officer Giles is entitled to the rights afforded him under due process as this investigation is completed. Until such time, he remains on paid, administrative leave," Burbank said.

The juvenile who was shot claimed he was not trying to hit any officer, but actually trying to avoid them in order to get out of the area, the D.A. report states. He used words like "jumped" and "hopped" in describing how Giles got in the middle of the road in front of his vehicle.

"(The juvenile) also said that it was the officer who stepped out in from of (him) and that the officer put himself in that position," according to the report.

Giles told prosecutors he started firing two shots when the vehicle was about 20 feet away.

"Officer Giles stated he fired another two quick shots followed by another two quick shots because 'the vehicle was still coming at (him),'" the report states.

But the district attorney's office concluded that when considering the speed the vehicle was likely traveling, and the amount of time it would have taken to fire that many shots, the juvenile's car was likely 60 or 70 feet away when Giles first fired. Furthermore, the vehicle was to the side of him and moving past him when he fired his final shot, according to the report.

"In this case, when officer Giles first fired his weapon, it seems very probable that (the juvenile's) vehicle was too far away to constitute a reasonable threat of death or serious bodily injury to officer Giles," the report concludes. "Since officer Giles denied he used deadly force for a purpose other than his own physical safety (e.g., to affect an arrest) we cannot attribute to officer Giles a motive or intent he denied to thereby justify his actions."

Although officer-involved shootings are not uncommon in Utah, it is rare for prosecutors not to clear officers of wrongdoing. Gill said because of the intense training police go through, he's not surprised that the majority of shootings are determined to be justified.

"Officers are rigorously trained and go through multiple scenarios on what constitutes the use of deadly force. More shootings are going to be found to be justified as long as training is occurring," he said. "In those 1 percent of cases that are not lawful, we have a mechanism to capture it."

When an officer who commits an unjustified shooting is not held accountable, Gill said all good officers suffer.

In a search of Deseret News archives, the last officer-related shooting in Utah when the officers weren't cleared appears to have occurred in 2007. Then, the D.A. determined that two Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies were not legally justified in shooting and wounding a man suspected of theft. Deputies David Jensen and Alan J. Morley shot Joseph Blair, who ended up with an arm injury. The D.A., however, subsequently declined to file criminal charges against those deputies.

Email: preavy@desnews.com

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