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 Issues of race and police killings had been thrown into the
national spotlight just weeks earlier by the police killing of
unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
A grand jury is considering whether to charge the white officer in
that case.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman told a news conference that police
were right to have fatally shot Darrien Hunt in Saratoga Springs in
September, saying they feared he could use the samurai-style sword
to injure bystanders.
"There were multiple persons that Mr. Hunt could have assaulted or
even killed if he had been allowed to continue to escape," Buhman
told reporters at the conference broadcast by television station Fox
13.
Authorities said Hunt lunged at two officers responding to a report
of a man walking around with a sword, before he fled and was fatally
shot by the policemen.
A private autopsy on Hunt showed he was shot six times, with no
bullets entering his body from the front.
He was in costume as a Japanese anime character when he was killed,
his mother Susan told the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper.
The sword had a dull, rounded blade and was a showpiece instead of a
weapon, Hunt's family said through their attorney.
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The Hunt family attorney, Robert Sykes, said on Monday that he would
still pursue a wrongful death civil suit against the police
department, Fox 13 reported.
"I think it's a whitewash. I think it's an exaggeration, and I think
they ignored good, hard evidence to the contrary," Sykes told a
separate news conference aired by the station.
Saratoga Springs, a mostly white community of 22,000 people some 30
miles (48 km) south of Salt Lake City, gained national attention
when then Mayor Mia Love sought in 2012 to become the first
African-American woman Republican elected to Congress. She lost, but
is running again this year.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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