A Utah man has been arrested on Thursday after he allegedly tried to run over several children with his truck in an community park parking lot.
An arrest report for David Earl Holden said that a witness said Holden drove over curbs and onto the grass as he steered toward the children, KSTU reports. Another witness said he flashed a knife at the children before attempting to run them over.
Police said they were initially called by a man who said Holden had threatened him with a knife at a McDonald’s a few blocks away from the park in Price, Utah.. When the officer arrived, he saw Holden walking away from the fast food restaurant with blood on his cheek.
At about the same time, a 911 call came in to the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office from a witness reporting having seen a man try to hit children in the parking lot of Basso Dino-Mine Adventure Park. The witness said the driver tried to run over the children, forcing them to “flee and jump out of the way,” then got out of his truck and threw rocks at them. One of the children threw a rock back at Holden, hitting him in the cheek and resulting in the blood.
The witness said he tried to leave the area in his own vehicle, but Holden followed him closely into a neighborhood.
Police obtained surveillance video from the parking lot. A police report said that Holden’s “driving patterns were consistent with what was described” by the witness and demonstrated “a depraved indifference to human life, clearly engaing in behavior that created a grave risk of death to several children had they been run over.”
When he was taken into custody, Holden told an offices that if he was released he would get a firearm and “become the next mass shooter” and then threatened to kill the officer.
Holden was charged with three counts of attempted murder, threat of violence, reckless driving, and threat or use of a dangerous weapon n a fight, KSL reported.
