The three Vancouver police officers involved in the fatal shooting of a man last week have been identified.
They are Sgt. Jay Alie and officers Sammy Abdala and Sean Suarez, according to a Clark County Sheriff’s Office news release.
Alie, 53, was hired by the Vancouver Police Department in January 1997. He has held assignments as a detective in the Violent Crimes Unit and as a patrol officer.
Alie was promoted to sergeant in February 2008. He has been assigned as a sergeant to the West Precinct Neighborhood Response Team and to patrol.
Abdala, 52, was hired in December 2001. He previously worked for the Santa Ana (N.M.) Police Department from February 2000 to December 2001. Abdala has been assigned to patrol, as a detective in the backgrounds unit, and as a neighborhood police officer.
Suarez, 36, was hired in January 2015. He previously worked as a corrections officer for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office from October 2007 to January 2015. He has been assigned to patrol and the bike unit.
All three officers are currently assigned to the Patrol Operations Bureau. They are on critical incident leave, which is standard protocol following an officer-involved shooting.
The three police officers shot William E. Abbe, 50, while responding April 28 to an assault between him and another man at Fourth Plain Boulevard and Stapleton Road.
The physical disturbance was reported about 11:10 a.m. Arriving officers found one man lying unconscious on the ground. Abbe refused police commands to drop sharpened objects he was holding, according to the Vancouver Police Department.
According to witnesses and emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian, Abbe was throwing pieces of sharpened pipe or construction rebar at officers just before he was shot.
Police Chief James McElvain said Wednesday that the investigation into what led to the shooting will be conducted by the Regional Independent Investigative Team, “entirely independent from the Vancouver Police Department,” as required by state law.
Clark County sheriff’s Sgt. Brent Waddell, who is handling the release of public information for the investigative team, said last week that there is no deadline for the completion of investigations of this nature. But generally, they take two to three weeks to complete and forward to prosecutors.
Detectives are requesting anyone involved in this incident or who filmed part of it, and have not yet talked to detectives, to call the sheriff’s office’s tip line at 1-877-CRIME11 or 564-397-2210.
