Utah Man Kills Ex-Girlfriend Before Shooting Himself After Long Police Standoff

A Utah man killed his ex-girlfriend and had a long standoff with the police on Saturday before shooting himself. He was critically wounded during the incident.

Police have not yet released the identities of the victim and the killer, as their families are still waiting for notification from the authorities.

Ogden Police Lt. Tyler Ziegler said the suspect was taken to the hospital and remained in a critical condition on Saturday evening, according to an East Idaho News report.

The victim was said to be shot once in the head.

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The Incident

The incident started at about 1:15 p.m. when officers responded to reports of shots fired outside one Smith's grocery store.

Ziegler said that the suspect confronted his ex-girlfriend in the parking lot outside the store.

Aside from the casualty between the victim and suspect, a 41-year-old woman was also shot and killed in the area, according to a Crime Online report.

The suspect was reported to have fled the scene in a vehicle but was quickly located in the frontyard of a home, where he held police at bay.

He was armed with a semi-automatic handgun.

The suspect then shot himself after hours of negotiation with the police. A SWAT team was also present at the site.

Meanwhile, nearby residents were evacuated from their homes, according to a Fox13 Now report.

Ogden authorities are still probing to identify what led to the shooting. The officials have not filed any charges against the suspect as of writing.

One man on the scene who identified himself as the victim's current boyfriend showed an alleged message from the suspect.

"You took her from me, now I'm taking her from you," the message read.

A witness at the standoff said that she thought the suspect was trying to get away from the police.

"The car comes whipping around the corner and slid to a stop and a bunch of cops comes up, and then a guy just took off up the road and a bunch of cops surrounded him and then he just sat down in a driveway," Jackie Martin was quoted in a report.

Another witness named Don Johnson said he saw police tossing water at the man.

Johnson added that the suspect was smoking cigarettes and was holding the gun to his head almost the whole time of the standoff with the police.

Murder-Suicide

Around 11 incidents of murder-suicides take place weekly in the United States, according to a Violence Policy Center report.

The VPC research has also discovered that over 1,200 Americans die in murder-suicides each year, with nine out of 10 murder suicides involving a gun.

In July 2020 VPC report, sixty percent of murder-suicides involve a male murderer and more victims were perpetrated by family annihilators.

In addition, 65 percent of all murder-suicides involved an intimate partner. With that said, 95 percent were females killed by their intimate partners.

All of those mentioned cases above involved a gun.

There were around 1,240 murder-suicide deaths in 2019.

WATCH: Man shoots ex-girlfriend, then self after hours-long negotiation in Ogden - from FOX 13 News Utah