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Nicholas Sanchez

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Twenty-five years to the day that Bartolo Justice Sambrano came into this world, he left it.

Sambrano was shot and killed by Ogden Police officers on the night of Feb. 21, his birthday, in a parking garage at The Junction in downtown Ogden. Police say Sambrano ran from them before pulling a handgun and pointing it at officers, who fired their weapons. Sambrano died at the scene.

• RELATED: Friends, family say Ogden’s Sambrano wasn’t ‘some monster gang-banger'

That same night, a few miles southwest, 38-year-old Nicolas Sanchez was fatally shot by Roy Police when he allegedly raised a gun following a physical altercation with officers. A friend says Sanchez had moved to Utah in an attempt to turn his life around, and that he felt “safe” and “at peace” here.

• RELATED: Man shot by Roy police had started to ‘make a good life for himself'

One tragic night, two tragic shootings.

The first stories in the Standard-Examiner included the basic details about the incidents — although, for obvious reasons, these versions came primarily from the police officers’ point of view. This is not to say I have any reason to doubt their accounts, but merely to point out that the two dead men’s versions of what went on at that Roy gas station and Ogden parking garage aren’t available.

To its credit, our system of law and order attempts to compensate for the one-sided nature of these initial narratives by placing officers on paid leave while incidents are thoroughly investigated. Because in our society, even the dead should be afforded the presumption of innocent until proven guilty.

But by the same token, based on what we know, we have no reason to believe police acted improperly. And until all facts are in, we should afford law enforcement the same benefit of the doubt. Police officers have a job to do, and the vast majority of them are just trying to do it to the best of their abilities and get home to their loved ones at the end of the day.

This doesn’t mean the Standard-Examiner won’t continue to ask questions, and continue to submit requests for information and evidence in an attempt to learn what happened in those two places on that one night.

Predictably, many of us have already pronounced our own sentences. Some say the person they knew couldn’t possibly have pulled a gun, and the cops are lying murderers. Others insist no cop would ever make a mistake in a life-and-death moment, and that these scumbag criminals deserved what they got.

One of the most important roles of the media is to attempt to share all sides of a story, no matter how unpopular. And that includes offering a more complete view of those newsmakers, whom many would merely apply the stereotype of “hero” or “villain.”

This was the purpose of recent Standard-Examiner articles featuring interviews with friends and family of Sanchez and Sambrano — to give readers a more three-dimensional picture of who these two men were.

One online commenter called the Sanchez article “about the worst piece of garbage I’ve ever read in the SE.” Another accused the newspaper of “spreading police hate.” A third commenter seemed to suggest a chilling scenario involving dead journalists, writing: “Let’s have all these journalists go out for a day and see what they would do in this situation. 1 less lying reporter at least …”

But this is not a zero-sum game, folks. Saying something nice about the “bad guy” doesn’t negate any of the virtue of the “good guy.” Nicolas Sanchez could have been a wonderful, kind man who turned his life around. And police could have been perfectly justified in shooting him dead. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

If you need a one-dimensional, good-guys-in-white-hats/bad-guys-in-black-hats worldview to help you get through the day, knock yourself out. As for me, I was glad for the opportunity to learn a little more about the lives of these two conflicted men.

My own personal suspicion (bearing in mind, of course, that this and a buck-fifty will get you a cup of coffee) is that more than likely Sambrano and Sanchez each made a terrible mistake that night — for which they both paid the ultimate price. And reading about their hopes and struggles didn’t change my feeling that police officers probably did exactly what they had to do.

It did, however, make these two stories all the more tragic.

Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/MarkSaal.