Birds chirp and the summer breeze gently sways the trees that line the 16000 block of Northeast 34th Street. A boy excitedly rides his bike through the parking lot of a Lutheran church.
The scene is serene, but a year ago the block was anything but peaceful. On June 30, 2014, the stretch of road is where a routine traffic stop turned into bloody gunfire between James “Todd” Sapp, a wanted man determined not to go to jail, and Dustin Goudschaal, a Vancouver police officer who was halfway through his shift of ticketing speeders.
It was all over in about 30 seconds — but the effects are still rippling.
Goudschaal, who was shot seven times, took nine months of leave from work. When he returned to modified duty in March, he did so in a new unit, one with less risk of gunfire. He’s still doing physical rehabilitation but will have to live with the lasting injuries: a weakened left arm and part of his face forever numb.
Todd Sapp’s actions that day also left a lasting legacy for his own family. Leah Sapp suddenly found herself the wife of a widely hated man, and then a widow, when Todd Sapp killed himself in the Clark County Jail.
“What Todd did was horrific. That poor (officer) did not deserve that,” she said.
While she fights to alter the way her husband is remembered, she’s plagued by his actions on that fateful day last summer.
“That 30-second act on June 30 does not make up the whole man,” she said.
Wife of a man who shot cop
When she met Todd Sapp in 2004, Leah Sapp knew he had a criminal history. She didn’t care.
“Love doesn’t see that kind of thing,” she said. “Who am I to judge anyone? He paid his debt to society.”
Leah, who said she’s never been to jail, said Todd Sapp spent his whole adult life in and out of prison — “more in than out,” she said.
Sapp’s felony convictions included misconduct involving weapons, resisting arrest and multiple drug offenses in Kentucky, Arizona, Oregon and Washington, according to court records.
In March 2014, he had been arrested in Clark County for attempting to elude police and possession of methamphetamine. When he didn’t show up to court, a warrant was issued for his arrest on June 19, 11 days before Goudschaal stopped him.
Her husband’s real problem, Leah Sapp said, was his addiction to heroin. At the time he was arrested, Leah Sapp said, Todd Sapp had a 5-grams-per-day habit. She said he was likely high when he shot Goudschaal.
“He was on heroin every day,” she said. “You can’t just miss a day and be OK.”
Police found 1.1 grams of heroin, 38.7 grams of marijuana and 3.5 grams of methamphetamine inside the truck he was driving after he was arrested, according to court documents.
“Todd on drugs and Todd off of drugs were two completely different people,” she said. “There was ‘Cotton’ and there was Todd.”
“Cotton” is a nickname that court records say is possibly a reference to Todd Sapp’s white supremacist sentiments. Leah Sapp said she didn’t know anything about his reputed Aryan Brotherhood involvement or his dealings in the drug world.
“Todd kept me out of that life,” she said. “I didn’t meet a lot of the people he associated with because he never wanted me to be involved in that.”
Leah Sapp said that “Cotton” was the institutionalized biker with a prison mentality. Todd, she said, was a kind, giving, loving person.
“He was a good man, he was just angry. That’s what the system does to people,” said Aaron Christopher, 22, Todd Sapp’s stepson. He also left behind an adopted daughter, Janna Hess, 26.
After the shooting, Todd Sapp drove away but crashed the truck. He ran, then stole a vehicle and crashed it, too. He was eventually caught and taken into custody on suspicion of multiple felonies, including attempted murder.
Less than three weeks after Sapp’s arrest, Clark County corrections deputies interrupted him as he was hanging himself in his jail cell. He was pronounced dead the following day at a hospital when Leah agreed to take him off life support.
While Leah Sapp spent the year grappling with the loss of her husband, she’s also battling her new reality. People recognize her last name and give her a skeptical and sometimes angry look. She’s been told she’ll always be remembered as the wife of a man who tried to kill a cop.
“Although he’s been portrayed as a ‘bad man’ and a monster, he was still a human being that was loved,” she said.
‘Forever at a deficit’
When Goudschaal made the decision to become a cop, he knew he was putting himself in danger.
But, he said, he didn’t have a choice on that day last June.
“(Todd Sapp) makes a conscious choice to try and end my life for no reason than trying to stop his own criminal activity,” he said.
Goudschaal’s ballistic vest absorbed two rounds, protecting him from more serious injury.
Lying in the street, reeling from the gunfire, Goudschaal was able to draw his weapon and fire. As he bled from his face, arm and leg, passers-by helped bandage his wounds until paramedics arrived.
He spent two days in the hospital. One of the bullets hit his right ear. Another shattered his jawbone and destroyed facial nerves. Doctors set a plate in his jaw and stitched up his other wounds.
When he returned to work nine months later, he did so as a detective investigating allegations of child abuse. He said he still misses his friends in the traffic unit and misses riding a motorcycle, which he can no longer do because of his physical limitations.
The bullets that went through his arm left him with about 70 percent strength and dexterity in his left hand. His hand shakes with effort when he tries to grip or pinch things.
The left side of his face is permanently numb, meaning he constantly bites through his lip and his smile sometimes resembles something more like a smirk.
“This wasn’t, ‘Oh, he got lucky and walked away unscathed’ … I’m at and will forever be at a deficit,” he said.
“For the rest of my life, my hand’s not going to work the way that it should. For the rest of my life, I will be numb in part of my face. I don’t wrap myself too much in it, but that’s what I get to live with.”
Despite his injuries, Goudschaal said he’s never been angry at Todd Sapp.
“I think about what happened as an incident, as something that happened during the course of my duties, versus really spending a lot of time thinking about what caused him to do that,” he said. “I was more angry over what it had done to my body and what I was unable to do and the scare it probably put in my wife than I was angry at him as a person.”
Goudschaal said he also has no hard feelings toward Leah Sapp.
“She didn’t pull the trigger,” he said. “Guilty by association is a stigma that is hard to see past, but I don’t know her, I’ve never met her, and I don’t feel the need to. But I don’t hold her responsible.”
He said he understands why Leah Sapp wants her husband to be seen as a person. That is human nature.
“There’s two sides to every story. … It’s her right and her prerogative,” he said. “The fact will always remain that he did his damnedest to execute and kill a cop. … Drug usage and criminality and hard knocks doesn’t make everybody try to kill cops.”
An ‘undefendable’ man
Over the past year, Leah Sapp has requested and combed through the records surrounding the investigation into her husband’s death.
At the sheriff’s request, an outside agency, the Camas Police Department, investigated Sapp’s suicide and issued a report several hundred pages long. She requested the autopsy report from the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office and surveillance footage from the jail. An internal affairs investigation is ongoing.
She learned that Todd Sapp had been placed on suicide watch the day before he hanged himself, according to the Camas Police Department report. However, following an evaluation by mental health professionals later that day, he was taken off of suicide watch and placed in a cell in the G pod.
Leah Sapp spoke with her husband the day before he hanged himself and said he mentioned wanting to die. She did not tell jail staff about the exchange.
“I knew he wanted to die, but it never even crossed my mind that he’d actually do it,” Leah Sapp said. “How would he kill himself if he’s in a cell by himself?”
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“I believe something faulty went on in that jail,” she said. “They enabled it, they facilitated it, they helped it along, and they turned a blind eye. Negligence equals culpability.”
But Leah Sapp is learning that what an inmate did to end up in jail matters when trying to make a wrongful death claim. She’s taken her case to two lawyers, both of whom, she said, told her that no jury will side with her.
“They say he’s an undefendable client because he shot a cop,” Leah Sapp said. “But he died an accused man.”
Though she’s not sure she’ll ever get closure, Leah Sapp said she continues to dig into the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death.
“I know that Todd would not want me going through all these things,” she said. “But I’m his voice, I’m his only voice.”
Changes to the jail
Jail Chief Ric Bishop said it’s unfortunate Leah Sapp feels the way she does.
“The men and women of our agency are committed to the safety of every inmate entrusted to our care,” he said.
Bishop said that after reviewing the Camas Police Department’s report on Todd Sapp’s death, the jail is implementing changes to prevent suicides. The recent modifications top the list of a series of changes made in recent years, both to the structure and to staff training, after 13 inmates committed suicide between 2007 and 2012.
On July 14, Clark County councilors approved spending $300,000 to update a study performed seven years ago that assessed the potential for remodeling, expanding or replacing the 1980s-era jail. The study was initially done in 2008, but a construction project didn’t get any traction following the recession, Bishop said.
“One of the things we’re studying is how to better observe and supervise the inmate population,” he said.
Corrections deputies can’t see all the cell doors from the pod control room, so Bishop said the study will help with how to address that problem.
The jail is also hoping to increase communication when it comes to inmate concerns.
At the top of the Clark County Corrections website, there is now a note written in bold letters: “If you have an inmate safety concern, contact our staff, 24 hours per day, at 360-397-2207.”
“If a family member has a concern … if an inmate indicates that they’re going to harm themselves, there’s a phone number right there,” Bishop said. “We’ll answer and then we’ll follow up on the safety concern.”
A similar method was put in place for those who visit the jail, Bishop said. Everyone who visits an inmate is given a card that states if the visitor has a concern to notify jail staff.
“If people don’t know what else to do, and someone makes a comment, we’re giving them the means to notify us,” he said.
Leah Sapp said that the changes are fine, but that they can’t change the damage that’s already been done.
“I think it’s too little, too late,” she said.
Goudschaal said that while Leah Sapp is acting within her right to try to sue, he said the news of her efforts saddens him.
“It’s disheartening a little bit to know that someone may benefit financially, whereas there’s no recourse for me,” he said. “For me personally, it’s pretty black and white — it’s a guy who tried to kill me. … No reasoning or rationale is going to really change that pretty blatant point.”
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