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News / Clark County News

Vancouver police officers involved in shooting identified

Officer Christopher Douville previously involved in Vancouver, Spokane shootings

By Patty Hastings, Columbian Social Services, Demographics, Faith
Published: March 2, 2019, 3:54pm
2 Photos
A Vancouver Fire Department paramedic checks for life signs on a man who was shot by police at the corner of West 12th Street and Jefferson Street in downtown Vancouver on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 28, 2019.
A Vancouver Fire Department paramedic checks for life signs on a man who was shot by police at the corner of West 12th Street and Jefferson Street in downtown Vancouver on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 28, 2019. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

Christopher Douville and Andrew Dunbar are the officers involved in Thursday’s fatal shooting of 29-year-old Michael Eugene Pierce, the Vancouver Police Department said Saturday in a press release.

Police were called about 4:45 p.m. Thursday for reports of a man waving and pointing guns at people near West 12th and Jefferson streets west of downtown. Shortly after, officers yelled that shots had been fired and a man was down.

Douville and Dunbar are on critical incident leave as is standard protocol.

Douville, 34, was hired by the department in April 2013 and has been in officer-involved shootings before.

On July 19, 2014, he shot a man during a disturbance at a home i in east Vancouver. Court records say Cacy L. Jordan, 37, was drunk and threatening his wife and children with a pistol. On-duty SWAT members and patrol officers, including Douville, arrived and contacted Jordan who refused to follow their commands. Douville gave spoken commands and then fired multiple rounds through a back window, one of which struck Jordan in the left shoulder, according to court records. Jordan was hospitalized for his injuries and later sentenced to 201 days in jail for second-degree domestic violence assault.

Four months after the July shooting, among a group of five officers involved in a shooting that killed a man carrying an Airsoft-type replica rifle.

Officers were called to Alder Creek Apartments just before 11 p.m. on Nov. 25, 2014, after an argument between a man and a woman escalated. A man, who was reported to be armed, had set an apartment on fire, according to Columbian archives. The officers entered the apartment complex and encountered 31-year-old Sebastian T. Lewandowski in the parking lot, who was carrying what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle-type weapon, police said.

After he refused to comply with officers’ commands to put the weapon down, the officers fired at him. He died at the scene.

Previously, Douville was an officer with the Spokane Police Department between August 2008 and April 2013. During his time there, he and another officer shot and killed a 34-year-old man outside of a bar in December 2010, according to The Spokesman Review. The man they shot, Jeremy Groom, was pointing a gun at another man.

Groom had pointed a gun at his own head and threatened suicide when his friends called police, The Spokesman Review reported.

In 2016, Douville was among a group of officers who earned Certificates of Department Recognition for their response to a reported trespassing call that turned out to be a violent assault. They chased and detained a man armed with a Taser who was running from the scene. The man was eventually connected to the assault. The victim later told officers that she thought she was going to die, and the officers saved her life.

Douville has been a K9 handler since July 2016 and is currently assigned to the Special Operations Division.

Dunbar, 28, was hired by the department in September 2017 and is assigned to patrol on the west side of the city. Before that, he was an officer for the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department between May 2013 and September 2017.

A candlelight vigil was held by family and friends Friday for Pierce, the slain man. He was born in Oklahoma and had been living in Washington for the past decade.

According to family members, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia as a teenager but had stopped taking his prescribed medication. They said he was homeless and had been couch surfing for the past several years after a conviction that resulted in jail time.

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Columbian Social Services, Demographics, Faith