Shocking police body camera footage captured the moment cops busted into a Utah man’s house and shot him dead as he was stabbing his parents to death in a bloody New Year’s Day attack.
The cops went to the West Valley City home at about 5:15 p.m. after someone called 911 — and although the operator couldn’t hear anyone talking, they heard screaming in the background, according to People.
The unwitting officers stumbled into a scene of unimaginable horror when they found 35-year-old Erik Bertelsen gouging parents Terrie, 63, and Kerry, 67, with a knife, a video published by the Daily Mail showed.
“Show me your f—king hands!” one cop yelled, his pistol pointing at the crazed killer as the officer rushed through the basement door. “Show me your hands! Get your hands up!”
But Bertelsen ignored them and continued to hack away at one of the victims, his blood-soaked arms pistoning up and down as he did his grisly work.
“Drop it! Drop it!” the cops yelled — then one of the officers squeezed off two rounds, sending Bertelson slumping forward.
The officers continued to yell for the still-moving stabber to drop the blade.
“If you do not drop that knife, you will get shot again!” the panting officer said between heavy breaths, before warning another cop not to get too close because the blade was “hidden in that other hand.”
“Take a deep breath, dude, take a deep breath,” the second officer said after calling in the shooting. “Breathe, breathe.”
Eventually, the cop who pulled the trigger lowered his handgun and stepped outside after the other officers asked him to “take a breather.”
West Valley City Police Chief Colleen Jacobs told ABC 4 that she saw a “tragedy” when she watched the footage.
“A very tragic incident that happened with the parties involved, and for the officers involved as well,” the chief said, adding that cops had gone to the home in the past.
The Bertelsens’ step-daughter, Chasity Ulibarri, told KMYU that she “kinda felt like something was going to happen” before the savage killings.
“I sent the cops over here for a welfare check four days ago because I knew he would keep taking their phones, and it wasn’t them that was answering me,” she told the station.
The officer who shot Bertelsen has since been put on leave, as per the department protocol.
Retired deputy police chief Chris Bertram told the station that he thought the officers showed solid discipline in a tough situation.
“I evaluate officer’s actions quite often,” he said. “I read reports, I see these body cams, and I will tell you this was a difficult day for them. They did an excellent job.”
Bertelsen had a lengthy rap sheet, and had most recently been arrested three days before Christmas for “running outside of his house and on the road in front of his house wearing only his boxers,” according to a police booking affidavit reviewed by KSL-TV.
When officers asked him why he was outside, he told them he’d used “a lot of meth.”
Bertelsen had been paroled just five days earlier for frequently violating his parole over the span of a decade, the station reported.
The troubled man was also arrested in 2009 for strutting around his own house party with a painted face and two big knives, telling guests that “someone was going to be stabbed, the devil is here, and he is going to kill,” a police booking affidavit said.
He was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault and spent nine months in the Salt Lake County Jail, plus three years on probation, the station said.
He was also convicted of kidnapping a year later when he wouldn’t let a former girlfriend leave his house after an argument — then threatened to kill her.
A judge sent him to jail for another six months, and hit him with another three years probation, KSL-TV said.