4-Year-Old Utah Boy Shoots at Police After His Father Told Him to Do So

Utah Child Unified Police Department Sadaat Johnson mcdonalds utah

By Camille Hutchison , Parent Herald Jul 23, 07:51 pm

The Police Department has released a body cam footage of an incident where a little boy fired a gun at officers outside a Mcdonald's Drive Thru.

Officers of the Unified Police Department were responding to some reports that a male suspect was allegedly brandishing a firearm at McDonald's employees after an incorrect order around 1:30 p.m.

When officers arrived, they detained Sadaat Johnson, 27, but a child in the backseat of his vehicle fired a gun at the officers.

According to the police department press release, they arrested Johnson after he did not cooperate when they asked him to step out of his vehicle.

The video showed officers forcibly ousting the suspect from the driver's seat and handcuffing him on the ground, per Fox News.

An incident of child abuse

The 27-year-old man had two children in the car at that time, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old.

As officers were attempting to take Johnson into custody, an officer who turned around noticed a gun pointing out of the back window and screamed gun to alert other officers before a shot rings out.

The officer used his hand to brush the gun away as the gun went off, hitting the upper part of the McDonald's building. Police then screamed at the person inside of the car to drop the gun and realized it was a small child after looking inside the car.

The young kids can be heard crying following the incident as officers ushered them out of the car and away from the scene.

The little boy told the police that he picked up the gun because he wanted his daddy back and that his father told him that the police officer cannot open the door during the altercation.

After the man was arrested, he told the police that he blacked out for 30 seconds after an argument with the McDonald's employee. He denied brandishing the gun in front of the worker despite surveillance video showing him doing so, according to the court records.

He also revealed that it wasn't the first time his 4-year-old child had gotten his hands on a gun, per The Hill.

Encouraged his child handling a gun

Sheriff Rosie Rivera stated after the incident that having an adult encouraging a little kid to pull a firearm and shoot at police only illustrates how out of hand the campaign against police has gotten, thus, such needs to stop and people need to come together as a community to seek solutions to the challenges they face in the neighborhood. Citizens need to bear in mind that officers are here to protect and serve and police are beyond belief that something such could happen.

Johnson was later charged with child abuse, aggravated assault, and interference with an arresting officer.

According to Healthy Children, roughly a third of U.S. homes with children possessed guns. An estimated 4.6 million kids live with unlocked and loaded guns. A terrifying statistic fact is toddlers are already capable of finding unlocked guns in the home and are strong enough to pull the trigger.

There are at least 2,070 unintentional shootings by children between 2015 and 2020 which resulted in 765 deaths and 1,366 nonfatal gun injuries.

In 2020, approximately around 125 toddlers and children aged 5 and undershot themselves or someone else. The unintended shooting deaths by children went up more than 30% compared to the same period in 2019, from March to December 2020.