A local Salt Lake City station just dropped the kind of story that makes regular people roll their eyes and makes anyone who has ever dealt with a government agency reach for an aspirin. KUTV 2News dug into what should have been routine surveillance footage of accused murderer Tyler Robinson turning himself in to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. That video, which ought to exist in at least three redundant backups if common sense prevailed, has somehow evaporated. Vanished. Poof. Nothing to see here, apparently.
Sheriff Nate Brooksby stood at a podium on September 17 and outlined how Robinson was delivered to his office. He said, “Our job was not to interview; our job was just to get him here.” Within an hour, he explained, Robinson arrived with his parents and was met by plainclothes detectives. Straightforward enough. You would think a sheriff’s office would want clear video of a murder suspect walking through the front door. Apparently not.
When 2News requested the security footage, they were told there were no records because Robinson did not enter the jail area. When they asked for holding room video, that was denied because of the investigation. So the reporters widened the request and asked for any surveillance footage of Robinson entering the building. Suddenly the story shifted. Now the tapes simply no longer exist because they were automatically deleted after the standard 30 day retention period.
The real kicker is that the sheriff’s office said the video was never sent to any other law enforcement or legal agency. Meaning the main investigators in Utah County never got it. Nobody preserved it. Nobody flagged it. Nobody thought that footage of a political assassination suspect surrendering himself might be worth keeping around for longer than a month.
Veteran Utah criminal defense attorney Rudy Bautista did not mince words when he talked to the station. He said the disappearance of the footage is deeply troubling and suggested the response from the sheriff’s office looked like an attempt to shut the door on scrutiny. He explained that if the footage really was destroyed, that alone is concerning, but the attempt to act like nothing is wrong is even worse.
In a case already filled with tension and unanswered questions, missing evidence is gasoline on the fire. Chain of custody matters. Preserving every piece of possible proof matters. When key video just disappears without explanation, people are going to start asking what else might quietly vanish next. As of now, neither the Washington County Sheriff’s Office nor the Utah County prosecutor has offered anything resembling a real explanation for why the footage was not preserved.
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