Key Takeaways
- An off-duty Utah Highway Patrol sergeant, Jeremy Matthews, engaged in a gunfight at a liquor store after witnessing a road rage incident.
- Matthews drew his concealed handgun when a man chased another into the store, firing shots and causing chaos.
- Despite being off duty, Matthews reacted quickly due to his law enforcement training and held the shooter at gunpoint after the incident.
- Prosecutors identified the shooter as Tyler Traveon Mhaka, who injured another person during the confrontation.
- Matthews had his weapon on him, demonstrating the importance of having access to it at all times, especially in emergency situations.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
TAYLORSVILLE, UT — An off-duty Utah Highway Patrol sergeant who had stopped to buy drinks before heading out of town for the weekend ended up in a gunfight inside a state liquor store, drawing his concealed handgun on a man prosecutors say chased another driver into the building and shot him after a road rage confrontation.
The shooting happened at the state liquor store near 4455 S. 2700 West, as reported by KJZZ. Sgt. Jeremy Matthews, now a lieutenant with the Utah Department of Corrections, said he had just clocked out and walked in for a quick stop when he heard loud popping noises behind him.
“I was probably in the store maybe a minute at the most,” Matthews said. “It was probably a lot quicker than that.”
He turned around. One man was running into the store. Another was chasing him with a gun, firing rounds into the building toward Matthews and toward the man he was chasing.
“It took me a second to kind of orient what it was,” Matthews said.
That second is worth sitting with, because it is the same second every armed citizen is going to spend. Matthews had years of law enforcement training behind him and he still described needing a beat to process what was happening, because he was off duty and in off-duty mode. “Sometimes when you’re just off duty, you’re just like everybody else,” he said. Mindset is not something you switch on when the shooting starts. It is what closes that gap before it costs you.
Once he recognized the threat, Matthews drew his concealed carry weapon and fired several rounds. Deadly force is justified only against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and that is the same standard armed citizens across the country carry under every day.
The shooter ran for the exit. Matthews followed him out, ordered him to the ground, and held him there.
“I just kind of held him at gunpoint and called in for some extra officers to come in and help,” he said.
Asked whether he thought he was dealing with an active shooter, Matthews said he never got that far in his head. “The biggest thing was I knew who the threat was and that the threat had to be dealt with,” he said.
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According to prosecutors, 23-year-old Tyler Traveon Mhaka drove into the liquor store parking lot at a high rate of speed during a road rage incident with another person, followed that man into the store, and fired a gun, striking him three times. KJZZ reported at the time that two people, including the suspect, were injured in the shooting, and that Matthews was later honored for his actions.
What stands out to me is that Matthews had exactly what he needed on his body, not in a duty bag, not locked in a car, not left at the office because the shift was over. He had clocked out for the weekend. The gun was still on him. Minutes later it was the only thing standing between an armed attacker and everybody else in that store, and the man carrying it had trained enough that his first move after the shooting stopped was to hold the suspect and call for on-duty officers instead of walking away from it.
