Utah man charged with accidentally shooting man

SALT LAKE CITY – A Utah man was charged Friday with shooting another man in retaliation for the victim accidentally shooting his brother in the hand.

Jima William Gat, 31, is charged in 3rd District Court with murder, two counts of discharging a firearm with serious bodily injury (first-degree felonies) and obstruction of justice (second-degree felonies).

On August 5, three men, including Gat, were hanging out at an apartment near 1600 West and 1700 South when the trio went to a convenience store to buy more beer. There they encountered 41-year-old Andrew Mozart Maka, whom one of the men had met a week earlier. According to charging documents, all four men then returned to the apartment.

“They were sitting at the table drinking beer when Andrew pulled out a gun, removed the magazine and bragged about the gun,” the indictment states.

Maka was asked to put the gun away, but when he put the magazine back in the gun and placed it on the table, a shot accidentally went off and hit Gat's brother in the hand, the indictment says.

“Gat became angry, grabbed the gun and shot Andrew,” the indictment states.

An autopsy revealed that Maka was shot twice in the neck, once in the chest and once in the hand. After the shooting, Gat allegedly threw the gun into the Jordan River.

Prosecutors say Gat's violent past includes a 2010 attempted murder conviction in Oregon. In 2016, he was arrested in West Virginia during an investigation into illegal weapons possession, the indictment says.