A man who was killed when his car crashed into the back of a dump truck Sunday evening has been identified as Adam Cushman, 35, a Clark County resident who worked as a criminalist with the Portland Police Bureau.
About 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the dump truck driver, Clyde Andrews, 53, of Vancouver, was in the 7300 block of Northeast 182nd Ave., northeast of Orchards, when the engine stalled with the truck partially in the northbound lane.
Andrews told sheriff’s deputies that he had to turn off the truck’s lights to restart it, according to a bulletin from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.
Andrews was able to start the truck and was rolling backwards in the northbound lane when it was hit in the rear by a 1996 Honda Accord that Cushman was driving north, the bulletin said.
Cushman, who was pronounced dead at the scene, had been on his way home from work, the bulletin said.
Alcohol wasn’t believed to be involved with either driver. Andrews submitted to a voluntary draw and results are pending.
Portland police said in another bulletin that they hired Cushman as a patrol officer in 2000 and he was promoted to criminalist in 2006.
Cushman graduated from the National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee in 2008, police said. As a criminalist, he processed crime scene evidence, reconstructed crime scenes, and also was trained in blood-pattern and fingerprint analysis, police said.
More recently, he had trained as part of a Homeland Security team to investigate deaths in major catastrophes.
Cushman is survived by his wife and their two children, 10 and 13.
Funeral arrangements hadn’t been set, police said Monday.
John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.
