Callers told emergency dispatchers the man a Vancouver police officer would later fatally shoot in downtown Vancouver had a replica gun. But investigators failed to tell the public the gun was a replica until weeks after the June 8 incident.
Responding officers also briefly discussed whether the man had a replica gun over the police radio moments before an officer opened fire, according to emergency dispatch audio obtained by The Columbian.
Multiple people called 311 and 911 about 1:45 p.m. to report an aggressive German shepherd had bitten several people. They also reported the dog’s owner, later identified by investigators as Vadim Sashchenko, 43, had a gun that appeared to be a replica, according to audio files The Columbian obtained from the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office under the state Public Records Act.
The prosecutor’s office did not respond to The Columbian’s questions about the status of its review of the shooting’s legality before publication.
One man told dispatchers during multiple calls that he saw Sashchenko point the replica gun at a nearby Portland fire boat, and it clicked multiple times, presumably as Sashchenko squeezed the trigger, according to the audio file.
A dispatcher asked the man if he was certain the gun was a replica. The caller replied, “Yes, because I saw him clicking it, and he ran down to the water’s edge, and he pointed it at the Portland fire department and clicked it like 12 times or 20 times,” according to the audio.
A woman also called to report the German shepherd attacked her dog and bit her leg. She said a man told her the German shepherd’s owner was “carrying around a gun that’s a replica; it’s not real, but he’ll point it at you to scare you,” according to the audio.
The dispatchers promised the callers they would add the information about the gun being a replica to call notes the officers would see.
An officer can be heard radioing that he spotted Sashchenko near the 300 block of Columbia Street and was following him at a distance while more officers responded. Someone can be heard asking the officer if he could see the replica gun, and the officer replied he did not. Shortly after that, an officer radioed “shots fired” and that the gun was away from Sashchenko.
The man who originally told dispatchers Sashchenko’s gun was fake can be heard at the scene shouting at officers, “He’s got a fake gun. That is a fake gun. That is not a real gun. Please don’t shoot the dog. It’s a fake gun. It’s a plastic gun.” Officers referred to that man over the radio as an agitator and called for backup to deal with him, according to the audio.
Investigators did not release information that Sashchenko’s gun was a modified cap gun until June 21, the third update from the Southwest Washington Independent Investigation Team.
“The item appears to be a Super Cap Gun manufactured in China,” according to a statement from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. “The item is sold with an orange tip, which can be broken off. There was no orange tip on the replica firearm used in this incident.”
In a written statement to investigators, Officer Brandon Riedel said he shot Sashchenko because he didn’t have time to engage in de-escalation techniques, and he feared Sashchenko would shoot him.
“I was looking straight down the barrel of his gun, and I feared I was about to be shot and killed, so I fired my handgun to stop him from shooting me,” Riedel wrote.
“I was aware that there had been some discussion in radio traffic about the subject having a replica gun, but I had no way to determine if that was true or if this was the gun that was being identified as a replica,” Riedel wrote to investigators. “My view of the gun, as well as the manner the suspect handled and brandished the gun, pointing it directly at me, caused me to believe in that moment that it was an actual gun, and I was about to be shot.”
Riedel’s body camera captured the shooting, and officers can be seen with their guns ready as they prepared to provide medical aid to Sashchenko. Riedel can be heard on the footage instructing other officers to keep their lethal force ready prior to their approach.
Less than two weeks later, Vancouver police officers fatally shot another man who pulled out what they later determined was a replica gun while officers tried to contact him.
