Two honor guard members stand in front of Vancouver police officer Donald Sahota's casket at a memorial on Feb. 8, 2022. Sahota died Jan. 29 after being mistakenly shot by a Clark County Sheriff's deputy.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
Although an off-duty Vancouver officer died after being mistakenly shot by a Clark County deputy, prosecutors on Monday argued jurors should blame his killing on a Yakima, Washington, man whose alleged armed robbery led to the fatal confrontation.
Officer Donald Sahota died by gunfire on Jan. 29, 2022, after he attempted to detain Julio Segura, who had robbed a nearby gas station and led police on a high-speed chase.
One of the responding deputies, Jon Feller, opened fire on Sahota believing him to be the suspect. The Clark County Medical Examiner ruled the officer’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the torso.
“His actions, from the start to the finish of this ... are what made this whole thing happen,” Clark County Prosecuting Attorney Tony Golik said of Segura during his opening statement Monday.
Segura’s defense attorneys contend that several factors outside of his control led to the shooting. For example, Feller opened fire within four seconds of arriving at the scene.
“This case has a lot of moving parts. You really have to pay attention,” attorney Ed Dunkerly told jurors. “But the proximate cause — the superseding, intermediate cause — is Deputy Feller.”
Segura, 22, faces three counts of first-degree murder charges from that chaotic night, in addition to other charges. Both of the dueling arguments in court recounted several events before the shooting.
Dunkerly portrayed his client as a young man discontent with living under the poverty line in a rough neighborhood in Yakima. He stole a Mercedes from a car dealership without a plan, Dunkerly said, and later robbed a gas station with a replica toy handgun to pay for food.
The robbery led to a high-speed chase in Clark County.
Officers on the witness stand Monday described speeding faster than 120 miles per hour on Interstate 205 in their chase. The chase only ended after Segura swerved to avoid spike strips and spilled into a wooded area near Battle Ground, Washington.
As law enforcement descended on the scene, Segura sought refuge at a nearby house — the home of Sahota and his wife. That coincidence, Dunkerly argued, was outside his client’s control yet contributed heavily to what came next.
“Let’s assume (every Vancouver officer) has a separate household. That’s 225 households out of tens of thousands of households in Clark County,” Dunkerly said. “A huge number. This just happens to be one of the houses occupied by an off-duty police officer.”
Segura came to their door and told the family that he crashed his car after being chased by police. He walked away from the door at one point, before Sahota, armed with a handgun, beckoned him back and tried to detain him.
A fight ensued. Both sides of the courtroom detailed the brawl in Sahota’s driveway to suit their arguments.
Prosecutors portrayed Segura as the aggressor, a trained wrestler who used a knife to severely stab Sahota. They said Sahota identified himself as a police officer before the fight began.
Defense attorneys said Segura didn’t yet know Sahota was a police officer and defended himself. He wrested the gun out of Sahota’s hand, stabbed him with a knife he bought to defend himself in Yakima, and fled inside.
Meanwhile, Sahota’s wife had called 9-1-1 alerting deputies to the scene and to the fact that her husband attempted to detain Segura.
Deputy Feller, who two years prior shot and killed a 21-year-old man after a drug sting went awry, arrived at the scene to see only Sahota moving toward the house with his service weapon in hand. Feller opened fire.
“He has to make a split-second decision. And makes a decision that will now haunt him for the rest of his life,” Golik said. “He thinks — reasonably — that person is the armed robber who has been assaulting a homeowner.”
Golik told jurors that many confusing and overlapping details contributed to Sahota’s death, such as the vague description radioed of the suspect — a tan white male in a white shirt — which also applied to Sahota.
But the blame, the prosecutor argued, should land on Segura.
“Deputy Feller was put in a horrible, horrible position because of the defendant’s actions at this point,” he said.
The chief question during the trial, according to the opening statements, will be to what extent Segura can be blamed for the shooting. Feller was cleared of any wrongdoing during police investigations into the shooting.
The stab wounds Sahota suffered, according to Golik, could have been life-threatening but he likely would have survived with medical treatment. First responders had been near enough to the scene that such treatment was within reach, he said.
Still, Golik argued, Segura’s continued actions to steal a car, rob a gas station, flee at high speeds and to stab someone amounted to “extreme indifference to human life.”
Dunkerly, meanwhile, underscored police missteps. His argument largely focused on Feller, arguing that the deputy didn’t need to fire so quickly.
Dunkerly also argued the crime scene hadn’t been properly shut down by responding police. He pointed out that Feller asked a sergeant to retrieve a pill bottle from his car, which the sergeant did. The pill bottle was never entered as evidence.
“He didn’t look at what was inside. He didn’t look inside; he just took it and gave it to Deputy Feller,” Dunkerly said. “He won’t be able to tell you if it was powder, a pill, whatever.”
Golik pre-empted that argument in his statement to jurors.
“They’re going to try to argue that the prescription medication had some sort of impact on his thinking,” Golik said. He listed some medical “issues” Feller takes prescription medication for, such as diabetes, his blood pressure and his prostate.
“He was on prescription medications,” Golik said. “They’re not opiates or anything like that.”
The trial is estimated to last three weeks.