The Vancouver man whom police shot after they mistook him for a wanted gunman plans to file a lawsuit against the involved agencies, his attorney said.
Brent A. Graham, the man who called 911 on Oct. 31 to report a suspicious vehicle, was shot in the leg by police minutes after hanging up with the dispatcher.
Graham, who was allegedly under the influence of alcohol at the time, didn’t know there was a county-wide manhunt in progress for attempted murder suspect John Kendall, his attorney said. After police shot at Graham, he fired his handgun and called 911 to report he’d been shot.
Documents filed in the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office paint a picture of confusion that led to the officer-involved shooting, with investigators calling it a “major operational error,” according to the documents.
Throughout the morning of Oct. 31, law enforcement communicated with each other on several different radio channels, so “critical information was not shared and when it was it was broken and confused,” according to the documents. Investigators also pointed out that in law enforcement’s response to the incident, “no one person was assigned supervisory duties over all the ongoing operations.”
Countywide manhunt
Graham, 55, was driving from his home to his job as a security officer in Portland that morning. While driving south on Blandford Drive in Vancouver, he looked to his left and spotted a silver Buick parked in a gravel turnout about 20 yards off the roadway.
He “hemmed and hawed” over letting someone know about it before he took a U-turn and parked behind it, according to the documents. He got out, looked at the car and noticed a rifle case in the backseat. He called 911 at 9:34 a.m.
Graham’s attorney, Steve Thayer, said that Graham was not aware of the shooting that happened about an hour earlier at a Walnut Grove intersection, nor was he aware of the countywide manhunt that followed for the shooter.
During that earlier shooting, reported at 8:22 a.m., 58-year-old Kendall pulled his car up to the intersection of Northeast 63rd Street and Andresen Road alongside his neighbors, Erich and Abigail Mounce. Kendall and the Mounces were due in court at 9 a.m. in an ongoing dispute. Kendall then pulled out a shotgun, fired it at the couple’s vehicle and fled the scene. Abigail Mounce was shot in the face and her husband, who was driving, sped away to the hospital. Abigail Mounce survived the shooting.
Police quickly identified the suspect as Kendall and learned he had previously made threats about harming the Mounces’ attorney. He had also reportedly threatened to commit suicide by cop.
Police sent officers to the attorney’s offices and the courthouse was placed on lockdown along with numerous schools. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office blasted media with a photo of Kendall and a description of his vehicle: a silver Buick with Washington plates ANX6459. They warned he was armed and dangerous.
So when Graham called and provided the information about the vehicle, including the license plate number that matched Kendall’s, he unknowingly sent members of the regional SWAT team to his location. The documents note that Graham was never told to leave the area or warned of the dangers, and officers were never advised that Graham had stayed at the location.
Warning shots
Graham was about to leave the unoccupied Buick when he got out of his vehicle to “take another look” at the car, the documents state. About 10 minutes after hanging up with the dispatcher, Graham heard gunshots and felt a pain in his right thigh.
He dropped to his belly, began crawling and then he did something he told investigators he’s been “trained not to do” because he “didn’t have a target,” according to the documents. Graham, armed with a .40-caliber Glock handgun, shot a round “down range,” east into the woods, according to the documents. Officers had fired their weapons from the north.
“He thought this would let whoever was shooting at him know he ‘was armed as well,'” detectives wrote in their report.
Graham then reportedly dropped his gun and called 911 at 9:46 a.m.
Vancouver police Officer Brett Bailey drove to the area in an armored vehicle and approached Graham, who motioned for the officer to get down.
Seven minutes after his second 911 call, Graham was taken by a SWAT vehicle then ambulance to a hospital where he was treated for his wounds. A bullet-proof vest, a police scanner without batteries and vodka and orange juice were found in Graham’s car, according to the documents. When he arrived at the hospital, Graham registered a blood alcohol content of .079, according to the documents.
Graham did not return phone messages left by The Columbian. Thayer said he had no comment about the report of alcohol in Graham’s system.
Mark Mercer, a co-worker of Graham’s who spoke with investigators, said he had talked with Graham while he was in the hospital. “Graham thought the guy in the car was shooting at him,” the detective wrote.
Mercer told the detective that Graham learned he was shot by police when he was in the SWAT vehicle and overheard one police officer ask, “Is this the guy we shot?” and another said, “Yes.”
Kendall was later found dead in the woods nearby. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Communication, chaos
In a PowerPoint presentation submitted to prosecutors, detectives point out a breakdown in communication, labeling one of the slides “Communication and Chaos.”
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,” according to the documents.
The three SWAT members who responded to the area fanned out on the Evergreen Boulevard overpass at Blandford Drive, about 334 feet from the turnout where Graham was. 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 the shots were fired.
Dense foliage in the area gave officers a limited view of the turnout, but Spainhower, a sniper for the SWAT team, used his firearm’s scope to see that someone was inside the vehicle, according to the document.
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, firing a total of eight rounds.
“Frances had a very short window of opportunity to make a decision and to stop the suspect from having a lot of cover,” according to the document. Frances also said there was no time to give commands to the suspect, the document states.
It is unclear whether any other officers at the scene gave commands to Graham prior to SWAT members firing their weapons.
The document ends by stating that dispatchers’ “greatest error” was failing to advise anyone of Graham’s presence on Blandford Road.
Investigators also point out that confusing information was relayed between officers over their police radios.
“These broadcasts are a reflection of a major operational error. No one person was assigned supervisory duties over all the ongoing operations. As a result 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 three officers involved in the shooting were placed on leave after the incident. LeBlanc and Frances have since returned to work; Spainhower remains on administrative leave. The prosecuting attorney’s office will determine whether the officers’ use of force was justified.
No tort claims have been filed with the city of Vancouver or Clark County pertaining to the incident, but Thayer said that a lawsuit will be in the works once he’s reviewed the investigative material. As of Tuesday, he hadn’t obtained the documents from the prosecuting attorney’s office.
“He’s lucky he’s alive,” Thayer said of Graham. “He was trying to help the police and then they shot him.”
