A Taylorsville, Utah, police officer has been charged with second-degree felony manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed man through the back window of a pickup truck during an encounter that began as a license-plate investigation and escalated into a vehicle-ramming and a single gunshot, Salt Lake County prosecutors announced Thursday.
The charge against Officer Jimmy Jeremy Haas, 36, stems from a shooting on October 9, 2024, in a parking lot roughly half a mile outside Taylorsville city limits in the suburbs south of Salt Lake City. According to prosecutors’ court filings, Haas was driving an unmarked police SUV when he followed the pickup truck into the lot after a separate Taylorsville officer noted the truck’s license plates belonged to a different vehicle that had fled from Salt Lake City police earlier that day.
Once the pickup parked between two other vehicles, Haas pulled up behind it, activated his police lights, got out, and turned on his body-worn video camera. A woman exited the pickup. The truck then reversed and began ramming Haas’s police SUV, prosecutors allege, as Haas repeatedly shouted, “Let me see your hands.”
The second Taylorsville officer arrived and used his vehicle to pin the pickup against a building. With his flashlight illuminating the driver through the truck’s rear window, Haas fired once, prosecutors said. The wounded driver fled and was later discovered unresponsive in a nearby garage. He died. No weapons were recovered from the pickup or from the man’s body, according to the court documents.
An expert who reviewed the shooting for prosecutors concluded that Haas “did not use a reasonable amount of force,” the charging documents state. Second-degree felony manslaughter carries a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison in Utah.
Haas was placed on paid leave for several months during the initial investigation into the shooting. He was later reinstated to duty, then returned to paid leave pending the current proceedings, according to an email from City of Taylorsville spokesperson Kim Horiuchi.
“We have confidence in the system and we believe every person is innocent until they are proven guilty at trial,” Horiuchi wrote, declining further comment under city policy restricting statements on personnel matters and pending criminal cases.
Blake Hamilton, Haas’s attorney, said in a statement that the officer would address the allegations in court and that the evidence will show Haas “acted lawfully in defense of himself and others during a violent and rapidly unfolding encounter.”
The case moves to court proceedings in Salt Lake County. No trial date has been set.