Washington's fledgling Office of Independent Investigations, formed by the Legislature in 2021 to conduct "fair, thorough, transparent, competent and unbiased" investigations into police shootings statewide, has issued its inaugural report — a review of the Dec. 4, 2024, death of Adam Grant Gunderson by Vancouver, Wash., police.
The 99-page report was released Thursday and details incidents that led to Gunderson being shot five times in the head at point-blank range by Vancouver police Officer Kyle Beguelin Flores as he and another officer wrestled with Gunderson, who had a handgun, outside a Safeway loading dock.
Gunderson's death was the first investigated solely by OII, which uses civilian investigators with limited police powers and is intended to erase the "thin blue line" that has traditionally protected police and allowed them to essentially investigate themselves in fatal officer encounters.
Once it's fully operational, OII will be divided into six regions across the state, each with a team of investigators, forensic experts and the equipment to conduct homicide investigations. The agency opened its first regional office on Dec. 1, 2024, serving Thurston, Lewis, Mason, Clark, Clallam, Grays Harbor, Pacific, Jefferson, Kitsap, Skamania, Cowlitz and Wahkiakum counties. Gunderson was killed three days later.
The report will be forwarded to the Clark County prosecuting attorney's office, which will use its findings to determine whether criminal charges will be filed. OII investigators, who are not affiliated with law enforcement agencies, did not draw any conclusions from the evidence they gathered.
According to the investigation, the 45-year-old Gunderson — an avowed "sovereign citizen" who held "anti-government" views and mistrusted law enforcement, had been "dumpster diving" at the Safeway on Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard in Vancouver, looking for scrap metal when Beguelin Flores and Officer Seth Anderson spotted his truck and approached to ask what he was doing.
Beguelin Flores, 28, who had worked for the Vancouver Police Department since 2021, told investigators he knew Gunderson from previous contacts. The investigation noted there was an officer-safety warning that Gunderson was known to carry guns and knives. Anderson, also 28, joined the same year.
Neither officer had any prior use of force complaints, the report notes.
At the time of the shooting, Gunderson had a felony warrant for his arrest for evading police, and Beguelin Flores said he had probable cause to arrest him for negligent driving from an incident in October. Indeed, the investigation noted a team of Vancouver officers had twice attempted to arrest Gunderson at his home in previous months, but both times called off the operation when he refused to come out and officers were concerned about escalating a confrontation.
According to the investigation, which relied on body-worn camera video, Safeway surveillance video and the statements of nearby witnesses, Gunderson was belligerent and uncooperative with the officers when they approached him at Safeway and tried to climb into his pickup truck and drive off. The officers intervened and a tense, two-minute struggle ensued, with all three men eventually going to the ground.
Audio from the body-worn camera revealed that officers repeatedly told Gunderson to stop fighting, stop "reaching" and that he was going to be shot.
During the scuffle, Beguelin Flores said he felt a smooth metal object near Gunderson's waistband as he tried to control his arm and concluded it was a firearm. Gunderson, he said, had "turtled" — drawing his arms and legs up into a tight ball — making it difficult to get control of his arms. Both officers said they struck him several times.
Beguelin Flores suffered a broken bone in his hand and was bitten by Gunderson during the struggle, according to the report.
At one point, Beguelin Flores said, Gunderson was able to get his hand near the pistol in his waistband, and that the barrel of the weapon was visible, pointing at his legs and Officer Anderson, who was trying to control Gunderson's other hand.
"So I fired my gun at Gunderson to stop him from shooting and killing me and possibly Officer Anderson," he wrote in his report. Six gunshots can be heard on the body-camera audio. An autopsy showed he died from gunshot wounds to the head.
The OII's final case report noted officers approached Gunderson and moved the small 9-mm handgun found near his body. It also notes that the sergeant who moved the weapon — identified as Trent Harris — declined through his lawyer to provide "clarification ... regarding the handling of evidence at the scene."
It also noted the gun, a small-frame Ruger semiautomatic handgun, had been reported stolen in 2013 and that attempts had been made to remove its serial number. Gunderson's DNA was found on the gun, the investigation found.
More investigations are underway, including two that began this week.
Shortly after 9 p.m. on Wednesday, police officers and sheriff's deputies stopped a vehicle in Poulsbo. In a news release, the Police Department said the driver had a large knife "and presented a lethal threat to the officers and deputies on the scene." After exhausting other options, police used "deadly force," though the news release didn't offer specifics.
Then, around midnight, a Clark County sheriff's deputy stabbed and killed a person suspected of drunken driving, according to a news release from the sheriff's office. They had gotten into a fight in a room equipped with a breath alcohol analyzer at a Washington State Patrol scale house off Interstate 5 in Ridgefield. Deputies and other emergency responders tried giving the person first aid, but they died at the scene shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Thursday.
OII is also investigating a Centralia police officer who shot and killed a man at an apartment in January.
The agency's director, Roger Rogoff, a former King County Superior Court judge and federal prosecutor, said as many as 20 OII employees worked on the inaugural report, including retired police detectives hired to train the civilian investigators who will eventually fill the ranks of the agency.
Rogoff said he expects another region will be staffed and running later this year, but budget concerns could slow down expansion of the program statewide.
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