SALT LAKE CITY — A man has been taken into custody after driving the wrong way on Interstate 80 in Salt Lake City and then attempting to flee from troopers early Thursday morning.
Koby Charles Bonomo, 24, was arrested and faces multiple charges after the incident, in which he is also accused of trying to run over Unified Police officers when they attempted to stop him earlier in the evening.
The officers were dispatched to an area along South Highland Drive on reports of a suspicious vehicle. When they approached Bonomo's vehicle, he allegedly refused to give them his driver's license or name. When Bonomo was asked to get outside of his vehicle, he instead placed it in reverse and "backed up aggressively" towards the officers, the arrest documents state.
According to the officers, they had to jump out of the way of Bonomo's vehicle to avoid being hit.
After leaving the first scene, Bonomo entered the eastbound I-80 lanes at 1300 East just before 3 a.m. and headed westbound. It's believed he crashed into something else before entering the highway in the wrong direction.
Wrong-way systems alerted troopers, who arrived after Bonomo's vehicle was disabled near 400 East. At that time, he fled the scene on foot but was later found and taken into custody at 300 E. Burton Avenue.
After being arrested, Bonomo told officers that he was overdosing on fentanyl pills, although there were no indications of that on the scene. He was later taken to St. Marks Hospital, where he was also found to have no signs of an overdose and was cleared by a doctor.
Despite recent deadly incidents, wrong-way crashes actually down in Utah this year:
Thursday's incident comes after what seems like a rash of wrong-way drivers across Utah, including an accident that killed two teenagers on I-15 last month. However, last week, UHP said the 15 wrong-way crashes this year were actually down from the 24 recorded in 2024.
