Clark County 911 dispatchers made no errors during the chaos that led to police shooting a Vancouver man they mistook for a fleeing gunman on Halloween, Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency said Tuesday.
The supervisor and six dispatchers working during the event followed agency policies, procedures and state law, CRESA said in its review of 911 recordings and investigative police reports.
A separate investigation into police involvement in the incident alleges that mistakes were made by CRESA. That investigation was completed by the Camas Police Department, whose officers were not involved in the shooting.
CRESA Operations Manager Katy Myers considered in her review what information was available to each employee as the events unfolded, and determined that those allegations were unfounded.
On the morning of Oct. 31, Brent Graham was driving to his job as a security officer in Portland. The 55-year-old saw an abandoned silver Buick parked in a gravel turnout off Blandford Drive in Vancouver and pulled over to check it out. After seeing a rifle case in the backseat, he called 911 at 9:34 a.m. and gave dispatchers the vehicle’s license plate. Graham didn’t know there was a countywide manhunt in progress for the vehicle’s owner, attempted murder suspect John Kendall, police investigators said.
About an hour earlier, Kendall had shot his neighbor Abigail Mounce in the face while they were both waiting at a stoplight in their cars. Mounce survived the shooting. Police later found Kendall nearby in some woods, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The officers involved in the shooting, Vancouver police Cpl. Chris LeBlanc, Officer Brian Frances and Clark County sheriff’s Deputy Anthony Spainhower, were on scene five minutes before firing shots.
Dense foliage in the area gave officers a limited view of the turnout from their position on the Evergreen Boulevard overpass. Spainhower, a sniper for the SWAT team, used his firearm’s scope to see that someone was inside a vehicle, according to the police investigation.
When the man, whom the officers believed to be Kendall, got out of the vehicle, Frances reportedly shot his weapon and yelled “shoot him!” All three officers fired their weapons, shooting a total of eight rounds.
It is unclear whether any other officers at the scene gave commands to Graham prior to SWAT members firing their weapons. Graham, who was shot once in the thigh, fired back before calling 911 again to report that he’d been shot.
The event was spread out over six different scenes in multiple jurisdictions, CRESA said. From 8:22 a.m. — when Mounce’s husband reported to 911 that she had been shot — to 10 a.m., call-takers and dispatchers answered 179 calls associated with the emergency, and dealt with 39 unrelated medical and police calls.
“In light of a complex incident moving across jurisdictional boundaries, involving multiple disciplines and multiple agencies on multiple channels, the 911 dispatchers did a phenomenal job,” Myers said.
The Camas Police Department’s investigation, however, said that when dispatchers first spoke with Graham, “he was never asked to give a description of himself; he was never asked to give a description of his vehicle; he was never advised of the potential danger he was in; and he was never directed to leave the area.”
The Camas police investigation also said that confusing information was relayed between officers over their police radios.
“SWAT, County and City were allowed to operate on separate radio channels. Critical information went unshared and when it was shared it was broken and confusing,” the report said.
A month ago, the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office reviewed the Camas Police Department’s investigation and cleared the three officers involved in the shooting of any wrongdoing.
