The Summit County sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed former Marine Donald Wayne Ball in November has been investigated by the Wasatch County Attorney’s Office and has returned to service.
The fatal incident took place after the deputy attempted to stop Ball’s car for outstanding arrest warrants issued by Utah’s Fourth District Court.
Rather than stopping, Ball reportedly led the officer on a chase that led him across county lines from Kamas to Bench Creek Road, where he crashed. The Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office reported at the time that Ball then exited the vehicle and walked toward the deputy with “a large blunt object.”
The deputy shot Ball, and he died at the scene. He was 41.
The Summit County Sheriff’s Office referred further questions about the incident to the Wasatch County Attorney’s Office, which conducted the investigation. They had responded to inquiries by press time Friday.
The Sheriff’s Office has declined to identify the sheriff’s deputy.
Ball served three deployments with the 1st battalion, 5th Marines regiment. His platoon leader remembered him as “a Marine’s Marine” and “a big teddy bear.”
After his military career, he worked for private military contractor Blackwater, now known as Academi. In 2007, he was one of several mercenaries who took part in a shooting that killed at least 14 innocent Iraq civilians. While four out of the six men served prison time before being pardoned by President Trump, Ball was not among them.
His lifelong friend and partner Rachelle Rigler said that when he was shot, he was living in the Wasatch Back in a secluded cabin where he didn’t pay his property taxes.
He decided he no longer believed in government authority, and carried long, blunt metal objects to help him with breathing exercises, she said.
He came into conflict with the law in 2018 when he was arrested for criminal mischief for cutting wires on broadcasting towers, which the arrest affidavit states he believed were being used by the government to track him.
He got help from the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and The Department of Human Resources before being given a sentence of a fine and time he’d already served.