Couple say stop by police ‘overkill’

When 23-year-old Ann Van Horn saw a Vancouver police officer preparing to pull over a friend’s black 1979 Ford Bronco one night last week, she thought it was for an equipment violation — the SUV, with large tires and a lifted frame, had no mud flaps.

It was about 6:15 p.m. Wednesday. Van Horn was in her own car, a green Jeep Grand Cherokee, and her 6-month-old daughter, Isabel, was with her in a child seat. Van Horn was following her friend Jacob Conner home, not far from Marrion Elementary School, in case his 31-year-old SUV’s engine stopped running.

“I noticed the cop pull out real fast as soon as he saw the Bronco,” she said.

Unknown to Van Horn and Conner, it wasn’t about mud flaps.

Officers in Vancouver and Hazel Dell were intently searching for a teenager who allegedly shot 19-year-old Daniel Thurston in the neck during a robbery the previous night, critically injuring him and paralyzing him from the waist down.

The teen was believed to be armed with a large-caliber handgun. A witness had seen a black, older SUV like the one Conner was driving leave the scene of the 8:51 p.m. Tuesday shooting at the Parklane Apartments, 10205 N.E. Notchlog Drive in Hazel Dell.

The officer who first spotted the Bronco on Wednesday night, and several more officers who were rushing to help pull it over, figured the young man driving it might be the one they were looking for — armed and willing to shoot people. Officials say the suspect had shot Thurston during a robbery involving marijuana.

Unaware of that, Van Horn called Conner, 20, on her cell phone and told him the officer seemed to be after him. They stopped.

“We pulled over and he hopped out to get in my car,” Van Horn said later. “The officer got out of his car and he said, ‘Get back in the truck!’ to my friend.”

Conner got back in his truck, as ordered.

The officer told Van Horn and another driver to leave the area. She said she drove about 35 yards and stopped, in case Conner needed a ride home later.

As Van Horn watched, she said a second officer arrived in a rush and stopped. She said that officer pulled what looked like an assault rifle from the trunk of the patrol car and pointed it at Conner’s head.

“I was thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’” she said. “The first cop looked at me and said, ‘I told you to leave!’”

As more officers arrived, Van Horn said she drove her Jeep slowly ahead and soon was boxed in by two police cars. An officer told her to pull closer to the curb and she did.

Standoff in Hazel Dell

About the same time Wednesday evening as Vancouver officers began asking Conner and Van Horn questions, Clark County sheriff’s deputies and other Vancouver police officers were converging on the Crown Plaza apartments on Northeast Ninth Avenue in Hazel Dell, north of 99th Street and west of Interstate 5.

The deputies had information that the gunman might be holed up in an apartment in Crown Plaza, not far from where the shooting had occurred the previous night. They called for backup including heavily armed SWAT officers with ballistic shields — and two K-9 teams — in case the gunman opened fire or tried to flee on foot.

Meanwhile, pulled over near Northeast 104th Avenue several blocks north of the Walmart store along Mill Plain Boulevard, Conner and Van Horn were being grilled separately.

Asked what her relationship to Conner was, where she’d been Tuesday night and where he’d been, and whether Conner had any large-caliber handguns, Van Horn said she answered the questions honestly. She said Conner has no such gun.

She said an officer told her, “If you lie to the police, it’s a crime” and told her she could be charged as an accessory to attempted homicide.

“The cop was letting me know the guy may not make it and it could be bumped up to homicide,” she said. “His demeanor was nice, but he kept accusing me of lying.”

“I told him flat out, ‘I do not lie, especially to cops!’”

Van Horn said she was scared at first when she saw the officer with the rifle, but she later became angry at the officer who was questioning her.

“I was extremely agitated,” she said. “I was pretty much yelling at him, ‘What the hell is going on?’ He was like, ‘Calm down.’ He goes, ‘Why are you upset?’ I told him, ‘You have an assault rifle pointed at my best friend’s head back here. Why wouldn’t I be upset?”

She added, “After about five minutes, he told me this was about an attempted homicide in Hazel Dell. I found out before Jake did.”

As for Conner, he said officers handcuffed his arms behind his back roughly, pulling muscles and causing pain in both of his shoulders, and put him in back of a patrol car.

“Throughout the whole thing, whenever I tried to say something, they just told me to shut up,” he said. “They wouldn’t even let me finish my answers to their questions.”

Conner said he asked the officers what they thought he’d done, but they wouldn’t tell him until later.

The questioning went on for a half-hour or more, Van Horn said.

About 7:20 p.m., officers in Hazel Dell radioed that they had their suspect in custody. They arrested Damian R. Grover, 17, of Hazel Dell and jailed him on suspicion of attempted first-degree murder and first-degree robbery.

Grover is being held on $750,000 bail.

The Columbian’s news staff had been monitoring emergency radio traffic during the standoff in Hazel Dell. Employees at the same time had also heard the Vancouver officers radio that they’d stopped Van Horn in a green Jeep and, later, ask whether they should hold the two they pulled over or cut them loose. However, the officers in Hazel Dell, busy with their standoff, did not answer those questions immediately.

Later, police released Van Horn and Conner. He’d been detained for questioning but not arrested.

‘Overkill,’ two say

Conner and Van Horn call the actions of the officers who pulled them over “overkill.”

“I was scared enough I didn’t sleep that night,” Conner said.

Police apologized for the inconvenience, Conner said, but he said he wasn’t concerned about the time he lost. He said it was the officers’ rudeness and roughness when they handcuffed him that bothered him most.

He said he’s attempting to get the officers’ names to file a complaint, and “I’m trying to get a lawyer that would actually sue them.”

On Thursday, the day after their experience, Conner and Van Horn, both Vancouver residents, discussed the matter with veteran Vancouver police Sgt. Troy Price.

Asked about it later by The Columbian, Price confirmed several details of what Conner and Van Horn said happened, and added another: Although police had no license number to go on when they pulled the Bronco over, officers had been told the older, black Ford Bronco-type SUV seen leaving the shooting scene had a missing rear window.

Conner’s SUV has a roll-down rear window, and it was down, but a few inches remained visible, Van Horn said.

“You’re talking about a pretty small number of vehicles that would match that description,” Price said. “This matched to a T what had been described to us.”

Since someone had been shot the night before, officers made a felony traffic stop on the driver of the Bronco. It’s common for at least one officer to have a rifle ready in those, Price said.

He said he wasn’t sure whether the officer pointed the rifle at Conner’s head, as Van Horn said, but said that the rifle was pointed toward Conner’s SUV.

One thing to consider, Price said, is that about seven or eight officers typically are on duty at such times in the city’s east precinct, protecting an area of roughly 30 square miles and 100,000 people. He said that could can explain why officers can be “short” with people.

“We’re very busy,” he said, adding that officers often go “call to call,” from one emergency call to another. While working on one call, he said “there are other calls coming in.”

So was Wednesday night’s traffic stop overkill?

“Absolutely not, not at all,” Price said.

Officers have a duty to find and confront people they suspect of violent crimes, Price said.

“It is a necessary part of law enforcement,” Price said. “That is how law enforcement conducts its business. We detain people.”

He said officers must be ready to protect themselves and the public when they confront someone who might try to harm them or someone else with a gun.

“I explained to them there’s no nice way to arrest someone who is believed to be armed and dangerous.”

Price said he could understand why Van Horn and Conner were upset, but “no one’s rights were violated, no laws were broken by the police, and no policy or procedure of the police department was not followed.”

He added, “Given what we had for that situation, if we had to do it again tonight, we would do exactly the same thing.”

John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.