Shouts break the evening silence.
“Police! Search warrant!”
Officers burst through the door. A man appears across the room. Metal glints from his clasped hands. Shots echo from a police-issue Glock 22. Todd Blair slumps to the floor.
“Five seconds,” said Blair’s mother, Arlean. “In five seconds, he was dead.”
Officers entered Blair’s home Sept. 16 during a drug raid when he stepped into the hall, wielding a golf club, police video shows. Ogden police Sgt. Troy Burnett shot Blair, 45, in the head and chest.
The shooting was deemed legally justified.
“They could have handled it a lot better,” Arlean Blair countered. “They could have tasered him. They could have done a lot of things other than shoot him.”
Investigation reports obtained by The Tribune depict an operation that took some unexpected turns away from protocol before that one explosive moment.