Former Salt Lake City cop gets 60 days for hitting man with car, judge calls out lack of remorse

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — Former Salt Lake City police officer Thomas Caygle is behind bars, serving his sentence for hitting a man with his car. On Monday, April 29, Thomas Caygle was sentenced for negligently operating a vehicle, resulting in an injury.

The incident happened on Dec 30. 2022. Caygle was accused of rear-ending a driver and the situation escalated when the two pulled over. Authorities said when the driver went to open his trunk, Caygle drove forward and pinned the man.

ABC4.com has been following this case, last week releasing records that showed Salt Lake City Police and Ogden City Police Department had internally investigated his behavior.

In court today, more than a year since the incident happened, the victim said he still hasn’t seen any sign of remorse. Judge Nelson also spoke on Caygle’s behavior since the incident.

“Your statement is wrongful arrest. It was an accident that turned into a wrongful arrest after a vehicle accident. I feel that the police investigation was already biased due to the fact that I was at the time a police officer instead of looking at all the facts at the time, I was guilty until proven innocent,” Judge Nelson said.

The prosecution presented a termination appeal, in which Caygle blamed the victim for hurting the department’s reputation, a document the Justice Files shared last week.

“Your statement that the other driver’s actions, as opposed to your own, are the source of any discredit brought on the Department demonstrates a lack of personal accountability and a failure to appreciate the seriousness of your conduct,” said Deputy Chief Andrew Wright with the Salt Lake City Police Department.

Caygle was sentenced to 60 days in Weber County Jail with credit for time served, meaning he will spend 53 days in jail.

Victim’s statement

While Caygle chose not to speak prior to his sentencing, the victim chose to make the following statement to the court:

This has been a very traumatic and awful experience for Angelina and I. And I know Angelina wasn’t treated as much of a victim as me, but I want it to be known that Angelina has struggled a lot from this as well. I’ve gone through hundreds and hundreds of hours of not only medical treatment for my leg, but also injuries and do part to my neck.

I think most importantly, though, the one of the biggest impacts, at least is not even on me as on Angelina. And it’s the fact that she had to watch this horror happen as she was watching me getting crushed. And I think that that’s something that wasn’t as clear as is, though I think it should have been and I think for me and myself, I had to watch the horror on her face and replaying that over and over in my head and watching the video, I think it really just just paint a terrible picture of what happened that day while she was frantically trying to help me.

And I feel so bad for her because she had to witness this horror and I had to endure it.

And as I mentioned, I went through great physical pain throughout this experience. So I’ve gone to 30 plus physical therapy appointments for my legs. I’m still going to treatment. I went to over 20 chiropractic physical therapy for my neck and that includes that doesn’t even include the home exercises that I had to that I still have to do.

Like I still feel, you know, some pain in my neck and I even though that I believe that it’s resolved mostly, I still, I still experience that. And in terms of my legs, I, I’m still going to physical therapy for those. And this is something that happened almost a year and a half ago at this point. And I thought it would be resolved so still getting treatment in my opinion and even in doctor’s opinions, this is never this probably will be never ending for me.

And I’ve spent the last spent the last year and almost a year and a half trying to recover my legs. But I know that they will never be the same. And this is life debilitating. This is life altering. It’s pain and suffering that nobody should have to endure that that nobody in my situation should have ever had to live through.

And not only is this wrong, uncalled for, and downright evil, regardless of Thomas Cagle being proven guilty for the felony or not, it truly has affected my girlfriend and I substantially not only financially, medically, and also in terms of not only just medical for the injuries, but also just the strain and stress that is caused both of us.

I try not to even think about this because it’s it just impacts me that much and I don’t we didn’t deserve it. We bottom line, we didn’t deserve this and we didn’t deserve what happened. To us then at that time. But we also didn’t deserve what had happened. What happened to us in the courtroom with Thomas Cagle as well.

He’s shown zero remorse. He hasn’t even apologized or address any comment of apologetic behavior to me in any regard. I don’t know. I still don’t even think that he understands the severity of his actions or what he’s done today. You may not have noticed, your Honor, but he was even harassing me in the courtroom, giving me looks and looking back over at us, smirking while I was up there speaking to you and the rest of the court.

And this is wrong. Police officers have a high standard of integrity to go out there to be held to. And Thomas giggles his actions uncharacteristic behavior, demeanor, lack of accountability, show his lack of integrity. Your Honor, we ask you to consider the great amount of physical and mental pain Thomas Cagle has exerted on myself and Angelino from this incident when we were going through trial and even now, and we ask that he be punished for the maximum allotment possible based on the conviction that has been reached.

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