The Vancouver Police Department, which is leading the investigation into the Oct. 17 fatal shooting of Kfin Karuo by Clark County sheriff’s deputies, was tracking Karuo in the weeks before the shooting in an alleged assault case.
Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp told The Columbian the assault investigation doesn’t create a conflict of interest for the department heading the independent shooting investigation.
Karuo, 28, was wanted for allegedly pointing a handgun at a man in a Sept. 29 incident caught on a dashboard camera.
Investigators said deputies were attempting to stop Karuo in connection with the alleged assault in east Vancouver. After he allegedly refused to stop and later pointed a gun at deputies, two of them fatally shot him.
Kapp said the Sept. 29 investigation is separate from the shooting investigation. Detectives with the Safe Streets Task Force, who were investigating the alleged assault, were not involved in the shooting or the Southwest Washington Independent Investigative Response Team, she said.
The department reiterated the separation between the investigations in a weekly update, which added that investigators have interviewed the involved deputies and other witnesses, and submitted evidence to the Washington State Patrol crime lab.
The Vancouver Police Department Special Investigations Unit issued a bulletin for the alleged assault case Oct. 7. Kapp said there was “no direct communication, outside of that bulletin, sent to area law enforcement.”
Search warrant affidavits filed earlier this month show that Vancouver police also requested and were granted a GPS tracker for Karuo’s SUV. The tracker was installed Oct. 4, but Kapp said the department was not tracking him the weekend of the fatal shooting.
When asked why Vancouver police didn’t arrest Karuo if they were tracking his vehicle, Kapp said, “Making an arrest of a person is not the same as knowing where a suspect vehicle is at, which is what a tracking device assists with.”
A search warrant affidavit in support of the GPS device said it would “provide the ability of VPD officers to facilitate the safe arrest” of Karuo.
Vancouver police were dispatched at 11:30 p.m. Sept. 29 for a reported assault at the parking lot of Tobacco Zone, 11320 N.E. 49th St., about a half-mile from where Karuo was later fatally shot.
In video released last week, a man, identified by police as Karuo, is seen driving in a white Ford Expedition. He approaches a man parked there.
The dashcam footage, recorded by the parked car, does not have any audio. Investigators and court records say Karuo asked the man if he was a cop. When the man told him it was none of his business, Karuo pointed a gun at him and told him to leave.
The victim told police he is homeless and lives in his car, often parking in that lot, according to court records.
Reporter Becca Robbins contributed to this story.
