SLATE KEY CITY — A man who had been detained during a three-hour standoff with Salt Lake City police was taken into custody once more on Wednesday, just five hours after being let out of jail and returning to the same residence. In addition, Maurice Charles Raffoul’s apparently unpredictable behavior, which includes threats to harm his parents, has Salt Lake police worried, according to the department. However, he hasn’t been detained for very long.
According to a police booking affidavit, Raffoul even told authorities after his detention on Wednesday that “the second he is released, he would be heading back to the protected party’s apartment and that nobody could stop him or control him.” “In this case, we have spent a lot of resources—including social workers—over a long period of time trying to make things right. The suspect’s behavior has gotten worse and worse over the past two days.
Seeing someone released from detention after warning about their potential risks is upsetting. Crime victims frequently require time to use resources to secure their safety, which is impossible when a suspect is swiftly freed from detention “In a prepared statement released on Thursday, Salt Lake police noted.
Raffoul’s violent tendencies go back at least to when he was detained on September 22 and charged with assault and causing damage to a phone. According to a police booking affidavit, when Raffoul’s father dialed 911 to report that he was being attacked, the dispatchers overheard Raffoul yelling that “he was going to kill” his father in the background. Raffoul “claimed multiple times he will be rich once his parents die,” according to police when he was being detained.
According to court records, Raffoul, 42, entered a February guilty plea to assault, an infraction, in that case. This plea was to be put on hold for a full year. Raffoul was detained on June 4 and charged with third-degree felony abuse of a vulnerable adult. After a disagreement over money, Raffoul’s father again reported being assaulted by his son. According to court records, Maurice “threatened to kill him if he did not give him $50,000,” and Raffoul “told his 75-year-old father that he wanted him dead.”
Additionally, police reported in an arrest report that the previous day, Raffoul “repeatedly threatened to harm police.”His father reported to the police that Raffoul “has threatened to harm and kill his elderly parents with whom he lives if they do not pay him money and that the abuse is daily “an affidavit from the police states. Following the formal charge’s filing, an arrest warrant was issued in that case, and on July 17, Raffoul was rebooked into jail.
Raffoul “made many calls to dispatch” on the day the arrest warrant was issued, according to police, even though he was experiencing “psychiatric difficulties.” Raffoul “contacted dispatchers multiple times cursing and yelling, asking why police were not at his house,” according to charging documents.
Raffoul got into a confrontation with the policemen when they arrived and hit one of them “on the left side of his face near his eye, causing it to swell,” according to a police report. He was detained for the warrant as well as a possible police assault and interference with an arrest. Following his arrest, Raffoul posted bond the following day, according to court documents.
Assault on a police officer, a class A misdemeanor, interference with an arrest, and emergency reporting abuse, both class B misdemeanors, were the charges he was officially charged with for the incident on July 17 on Tuesday. Raffoul assaulted a family member once more on Tuesday, the same day he was charged for the July incident, and then barricaded himself inside, according to Salt Lake police, who dispatched a SWAT team to the house. Raffoul turned himself into police three hours into the standoff.
According to a statement from the department, Raffoul had been physically abusing someone inside the home “for the last three days” when he was apprehended. According to jail records, he was taken into custody for an assault investigation and lodged in the Salt Lake County Jail at 5:40 p.m. on Tuesday. He was freed on bond from the jail around 11:35 on Wednesday.
However, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office also moved quickly to file charges for the most recent incident on Wednesday, accusing Raffoul of striking his father in the stomach on Saturday, elbowing him, and kicking him in the leg. These allegations are both class A misdemeanors. By Wednesday afternoon, a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
Raffoul violated a protective order that had been imposed by a judge by going back to his parent’s house at the time that the arrest warrant was issued. After Raffoul fled the house, according to Salt Lake police, they discovered him in a car. He was pulled over and detained for the warrant as well as an investigation into a jail release order.
Raffoul has repeatedly broken the terms of his jail release, according to the police, and “has also been attacking the victim inside the house. The protected party’s residence contains a sizable collection of firearms, which Raffoul has access to.” Officers stated in an affidavit that Raffoul “has consistently demonstrated that he will break the terms of his jail release and continue to assault the victim” and “has proved himself to be a considerable danger” to his father and neighbors. Raffoul will be kept in custody without the opportunity to post bail this time, per the officers’ request.
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