An off duty police officer from Odgen, Utah is being hailed as a hero for engaging 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic in a shoot-out, stopping Talovic's shooting rampage that left 5 dead.

Photo from KSL TV 

The statements from Officer Hammond that really impacted me were:

I can say that when I saw the suspect, no one else was hurt.

and

I just happened to be the one who was there. I felt like I was there and I did what I needed to do.

Officer Kenneth Hammond had gone to Trolley Square with his pregnant wife for an early Valentines Day dinner.  They had just finished dinner and walked outside into the mall, when they heard some pops in the distance.  As they walked into the main part of the mall, they saw people seriously injured on the ground.

At a news conference today, Officer Kenneth Hammond tells the rest of his story:

"I looked up a little bit further off to my right, and I noticed that there was a man with a shotgun walking out of the business where the people were seriously injured. I turned to my wife and I said, ‘You need to leave, go back to the restaurant, call 9-1-1, and lock it down.' Thankfully she did exactly what I told her to do. She went back and called 9-1-1.

"As she was walking away, the suspect did engage me. He took a shot at me. It was a pretty good distance. I was still up on the second tier. I decided that I needed to get to a safer place. I lost sight of him for a few minutes, it was probably just seconds. I knew the escalators were coming up the the second tier, and they were behind me. I was concerned that the suspect was going to come up from behind.

"At that point I stood up and I began to watch where I last saw him and keep my eye on the escalators. That's when I noticed a uniformed Salt Lake City police officer standing on the lower level about equal with me. It was kind of tense for a few seconds because he didn't recognize me, and I was standing there in plain clothes with a gun out. We kind of just stared at each other, and I'm screaming as loud as I can, 'I'm Officer Hammond, Ogden City Police, I'm off-duty, OPD,' and just kept repeating myself, and I could tell by the expression on his face that he realized that I was not a threat.

I told him, ‘Sergeant, you stay there. I'm going to come over to you.' I went down the escalators, and I came up to right behind the sergeant and reconfirmed my identity with him.

"At that point no one could see where the suspect was, so at that point I kind of fanned off to the left a little bit, where I did take shots at the suspect. There was a brief moment after I fired my last two shots where there was probably five or 10 seconds of silence. I did hear what sounded like rapid fire from a machine gun type weapon. I looked around the corner again where the glass was falling, and at that point I could see that the suspect was down. At that point, myself and the other Salt Lake City sergeants did approach the suspect where the SWAT team placed him in handcuffs."