"‘He has a gun!’ An eyewitness details what happened when the FBI came to a Provo neighborhood

Deseret News ^ | August 10, 2023 | Kyle Dunphey

[devere]

“Craig Robertson, come out with your hands up! This is the FBI.”

That’s what residents of a quaint, suburban neighborhood pushed up against Provo Canyon near the BYU campus say they woke up to in the early morning hours Wednesday.

“It sounded like it was coming from inside my house,” said one neighbor, who asked not to be identified.

What followed was a barrage of gunshots. Moments later, authorities carried the overweight, elderly man out of his house, placed him on the sidewalk and tried, unsuccessfully, to render first aid, according to the witness. Several neighbors said his body remained on the concrete for two hours as blood soaked through a white sheet paramedics placed over him.

The FBI has not released details about the shooting. The neighbor’s eyewitness account provides the clearest picture so far of the fatal encounter between authorities and 75-year-old Craig Robertson.

After the sound of about six gunshots, “you hear them yell ‘shots fired, shots fired. He has a gun!’ And then a whole bunch more shots,” said the neighbor. There was such a loud barrage they were unable to tell how many times the agents inside Robertson’s home fired. “They were all shooting at the same time ... and at that point in time, I was in get-my-kid mode.”

[old-ager]

L.E. gunslingers are not supposed to be so easily scared.

You don’t understand how incapable he was of pulling off any kind of sniper attack.

Close range attacks are so much easier to defend, and he was being watched anyway.

You speak like a scared L.E. Dangerous?

[Gunslingr3]

You don’t understand how incapable he was of pulling off any kind of sniper attack.

You don't understand he threatened more than just a sniper attack. He threatened to shoot someone with a handgun in an parking garage. A person that doesn't have a security detail. Your deflections simply fail any reasonable consideration of the facts.