Pierce County deputy fired 12 shots during deadly traffic stop. Did passenger go for gun?

Recently released body-worn camera footage and investigative documents reveal what led up to a Pierce County sheriff’s deputy firing 12 shots at a car’s backseat passenger, killing him, during a January traffic stop near Puyallup.

According to police records, a DUI investigation took a turn when deputy Thomas Dolan, a 26-year-old who had been on the force almost three years, spotted a box of ammunition on the floor of the car, drew his gun and shined a flashlight on a pistol in the lap of 22-year-old Moses Portillo.

The video shows Dolan shouting for Portillo to put his hands on the ceiling. It then shows the deputy opening fire in reaction to upper body movement from Portillo. Dolan later said Portillo, who was sitting across the backseat with his back to the deputy due to a full-leg cast, reached for his gun.

The video footage and investigative documents raise questions about Portillo’s level of compliance and the positioning of his body, as well as the tactics used by Dolan during the traffic stop.

A law firm representing Portillo’s mother told The News Tribune it is investigating the case in consultation with experts to determine what happened and whether any legal action is warranted.

“It’s the entire interaction that matters, not a single act,” said Gary Clower, a former criminal defense attorney who now owns Tacoma Injury Law Group. “So far, we have the officer’s version and we’ve got some reports, but what we don’t have are the actual videos.”

A Tacoma police detective who led the outside probe of Portillo’s killing for the Pierce County Force Investigation Team, a group of regional law enforcement agencies, forwarded the case to Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Mary Robnett on June 30 for a charging decision.

The shooting remained under review by the Prosecutor’s Office as of Oct. 10, according to spokesperson Adam Faber.

PCFIT investigators have released little information about the incident during the last nine months.

The effect has been a lack of closure for Portillo’s mother and a delay in legal conclusions about the shooting, according to Clower.

“That’s been frustrating, and difficult for the family,” said Clower. “The News Tribune has been given video before the family’s records request has been acted upon.”

PCFIT has sometimes released edited video narratives of police shootings using body-worn camera footage upon request from the head of the involved agency but did not do so in the case of Portillo.

The News Tribune received the Tacoma police case file in late July and a clip of Dolan’s body-worn camera footage in late September through a public records request. Officials have not yet released full-length body-worn camera and patrol-car camera videos, which are described in investigative documents.

Traffic stop turns deadly

Dolan’s patrol car dash camera started recording just before 10 p.m. on Jan. 16 as he followed a silver 2006 BMW 325i southbound on Canyon Road East near 128th Street, according to police documents.

The deputy wrote in a statement to investigators that he watched the BMW drive into the left lane without a signal and then move back to the middle lane without its turn signal flashing for the required 100 feet. He also noticed that the driver’s side mirror was cracked.

About 30 seconds into the video, Dolan initiated a traffic stop based on the alleged traffic violations and because he suspected the driver could be intoxicated, according to police documents and his written statement.

The BMW pulled over near the 13400 block of Canyon Road East, directly under a street lamp, according to police documents.

Dolan shined his patrol car’s spotlight into the BMW “to obstruct their vision for my safety,” the deputy wrote in a statement to outside investigators. He then saw two people in the front and a rear passenger, later identified as Portillo, sitting across the back seats. It appeared Portillo wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

The deputy approached the driver’s window and said he pulled her over for a broken mirror, according to police documents, including an interview with the driver.

As the driver grabbed her license, Dolan wrote that he confirmed Portillo wasn’t wearing a seat belt and also saw a half-empty bottle of Hennessy in his lap. The deputy then asked the driver to get Portillo’s ID because of the seat belt and open bottle.

Portillo, whose window remained closed, chafed at the request and asked the driver why, since he wasn’t the one driving, according to police documents, including the driver’s interview.

As the driver and Portillo talked, Dolan shined his flashlight into the back seat and spotted a box of 9 mm ammunition on the floorboard, according to his statement to police.

That’s when an approximately one-minute video from Dolan’s body-worn camera footage shared with The News Tribune begins. The clip provided was cut and slowed to half speed by investigators.

“OK, where’s the gun in the car?” Dolan asked.

“The what?” the driver replied, sounding surprised.

“The gun,” Dolan repeated.

Portillo had his wallet out and appeared to hand something to the driver, according to the video and a detective who reviewed it. Dolan’s flashlight also illuminated an orange vape device in Portillo’s right hand.

Dolan continued looking into the rear of the car with his flashlight. It was dark and the car’s windows were tinted.

“The what?” the driver asked again before Dolan cut her off.

“OK, it’s on his lap,” Dolan said as he pulled out his handgun and trained it on Portillo.

About two minutes had passed since Dolan first initiated the traffic stop. The black pistol in Portillo’s lap was never visible on video footage reviewed by The News Tribune.

“What are you talking about?” the driver said. “What’s on his lap?”

Portillo remained facing away from Dolan with his back to the window. Dolan wrote in his statement he was afraid for his life.

“Hey, put your (expletive) hands up,” Dolan said to Portillo while he rapped on the window twice with a fist.

Dolan spoke into his radio: “One at gunpoint; there’s a gun on his lap.”

“What?” the driver said loudly after hearing the radio call.

“Hey, show me your (expletive) hands,” Dolan said, shining his flashlight on Portillo’s upper body.

Portillo raised his arms to about shoulder height in response, turned his head over his left shoulder toward Dolan and appeared to say something, according to video footage and police documents.

“What’d you say?” the driver asked, looking at the deputy. Speaking louder, she said, “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a (expletive) gun in his lap,” Dolan replied.

Dolan immediately added a command for Portillo: “Don’t (expletive) reach for it.”

“Hey, put your hands on the ceiling,” the deputy said.

Portillo said something unintelligible to the deputy over his left shoulder, according to the video.

Dolan shouted back quickly, “Put your (expletive) hands on the ceiling.”

The deputy wrote in his statement that Portillo had lowered his hands to chest height but raised them again in response to his commands.

The retorts between Dolan and Portillo then began to accelerate.

“What, you going to shoot me?” Portillo asked.

“Put your (expletive) hands on the ceiling,” Dolan shouted again.

“What?” Portillo asked.

“Put your (expletive) hands on the ceiling,” Dolan shouted a third time.

Portillo appeared to say “what” or “why” but is drowned out by Dolan and road noise in the video.

“Right now,” Dolan commanded.

Portillo appeared to ask “why” or “what” again, his head still turned over his left shoulder.

“Right now,” Dolan repeated.

Portillo then turned slightly right and sat up, straightening his head and upper body to face forward with his legs, away from Dolan, according to police documents and body-worn camera footage. A detective wrote that dash camera footage from Dolan’s car, which has not been provided to The News Tribune, showed one of Portillo’s hands move out of view below the back seat headrests as he sat up.

Dolan squeezed the trigger of his sidearm in response, according to video footage and a detective who reviewed it.

The deputy fired three shots toward Portillo’s head, the muzzle of his gun inches from the window.

Dolan continued to fire another nine shots at Portillo in rapid succession as he backed away from the window and toward the front of the car. The gunfire left a gash in the window where Portillo was moments earlier.

“Shots fired, shots fired,” Dolan said into his radio, bullet casings pinging against the pavement.

The body-warn camera clip provided to The News Tribune ended there, just before 10:01 p.m.

Pierce County deputies now wearing body cameras. Here’s when they’ll be activated

Emergency response to fatal shooting

Dolan breathed heavily as he asked for backup from the front of the BMW, according to police documents discussing his body-worn camera footage. The driver and front passenger of the car had their hands up and asked to get out of the car.

When the first deputy arrived, Dolan told him, “There is a gun on his lap, bro. He went for it.”

Dolan ordered the driver, a then-20-year-old woman, to crawl out of the car. Another deputy handcuffed her.

As more deputies arrived, Dolan repeatedly told them about the gun in Portillo’s lap and the box of ammo on the floor, according to police documents. He asked them to “get eyes” on the front passenger.

Another deputy directed the then-20-year-old man in the front passenger seat to get out of the car to be handcuffed, according to police documents.

Portillo remained in the backseat as deputies conferred about how to retrieve the gun from his lap safely.

A deputy told Dolan to move from the scene, and two others asked if he was OK as he walked away.

“Yeah, he (expletive) tried to shoot me,” Dolan replied to one of the deputies, according to police documents.

Beside the BMW, a responding deputy asked for a tactical shield to approach Portillo, but no deputies had one.

About 6 minutes after the shooting, around 10:07 pm, a deputy entered the BMW from the driver’s door and removed the handgun from Portillo’s lap.

Deputies pulled Portillo out of the rear driver’s side door, removed his sweatshirt and started chest compressions. A second handgun was underneath Portillo, but deputies left it in place since all the occupants were away from the car.

Responding fire personnel took over medical aid soon after. Medical equipment readings indicated Portillo had no pulse at 10:23 p.m. and again at 10:29 p.m. He was declared dead at the scene.

Of the 12 shots Dolan fired, at least eight hit Portillo, according to a Medical Examiner’s Office autopsy discussed in police reports and provided in full to The News Tribune by an attorney for Portillo’s mother.

Two bullets struck the back of his head, one fatally piercing his skull. Another hit the base of his neck. One shot grazed Portillo under his left ear. Two more deadly shots entered his back near his left shoulder blade, penetrating his heart. Three bullets struck his left shoulder. Another shot may have grazed Portillo’s upper left shoulder.

Puyallup police detectives took the detained car passengers to Tacoma police headquarters to be interviewed. Neither of them has been charged or cited in connection to the incident.

A fellow Pierce County deputy drove Dolan about five miles to the Sheriff’s Department’s South Hill precinct, where he was joined by a union attorney by midnight

Pierce deputy details decision to shoot

At about 2 a.m. on Jan. 17, Lakewood police investigators photographed Dolan and his equipment, according to investigative documents. They also counted the number of rounds from his handgun.

Represented by an attorney, Dolan answered questions about his uniform, equipment and weapons. He told investigators he wasn’t injured and did not use a rifle but otherwise did not speak about the incident, according to police records. Detectives did not document any additional questions about the incident.

Dolan’s only statement to outside investigators came in a letter he submitted with a union attorney on Jan. 21, five days after the shooting. He viewed his body-worn camera video afterward and declined to provide any additional comments to investigators.

Referring to Portillo’s apparent irritation about the request for his ID during the traffic stop, Dolan wrote that he was “concerned with the tone of voice” Portillo used and the fact that it was difficult to see what he was doing through the car’s tinted windows.

The driver of the car “seemed to be caught off guard” after Dolan saw the ammunition on the backseat floorboard and started asking about a gun in the car, according to the deputy’s statement.

He wrote that he shined his flashlight in the backseat again when he perceived movement from Portillo. Then he spotted the black handgun in his lap.

“This person in the back seat was now a threat to my safety. I was afraid for my life. I know that someone can pick up and shoot a firearm at me faster than I could draw mine,” Dolan wrote in his statement. “I had to prepare to defend myself as I issued commands. I drew my firearm from its holster and pointed it at the backseat passenger.”

Dolan wrote that Portillo partially complied with his command to put his hands up by raising them to about head height.

After Portillo slightly lowered and raised his hands again, Dolan wrote he heard Portillo say something to the effect of, “You’re going to have to shoot me.”

“I am not sure exactly what he said, but I perceived this to mean that the suspect intended for one of us to die during the encounter. I felt like I was being threatened or challenged,” Dolan wrote.

Audio from Dolan’s body-worn camera footage showed Portillo said, “What, you going to shoot me?” according to a detective who reviewed it.

Dolan wrote he thought Portillo tried to obscure the deputy’s vision inside the car by turning his left shoulder away.

“I watched in horror as the suspect kept his left hand in the air in what I perceived to be a distraction as he and (sic) began to drop his right hand to his lap. It appeared to me that the suspect was going to pick up the firearm, shoot me, and kill me,” Dolan wrote.

Dolan then documented his thought process about choosing to shoot Portillo.

His closest backup was occupied with another traffic stop more than 70 blocks away. Retreating to his car meant continuing past Portillo. He was afraid that if he went to the front of the car the driver could run into him or one of the other occupants could brandish a gun. Traffic on Canyon Road East made it dangerous to cross. The closed car window prevented him from using a Taser, pepper spray or other less-than-lethal tools.

“My only option was to fire my duty weapon at the suspect in an attempt to end the imminent threat to my life,” Dolan wrote. “There was no other reasonable alternative to stop the threat to my life.”

As he fired, Dolan wrote he backpedaled toward the front of the car to keep the driver and front passenger in view.

“I lost sight of the back passenger,” Dolan wrote. “I stopped firing because I no longer perceived an immediate threat to my life, and I saw no movement from the back passenger.”

Dolan held the driver and front passenger at gunpoint until backup arrived about two minutes later, according to police documents and a dispatch log.

The Monday after Dolan gave his statement, the Sheriff’s Department set the date for him to return to normal duty: Jan. 28, 12 days after shooting Portillo.

Deputies involved in shootings generally are required to take a week off duty, undergo a psychological evaluation and complete a shooting-range practice, according to Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Sgt. Darren Moss. Some deputies take more than the required leave.

Involved agency heads receive limited briefings from PCFIT in order to manage internal investigations, which allows them to clear officers to return to duty during the remainder of an administrative probe, Moss said.

Training expert, reform advocates discuss tactics

How police officers approach traffic stops can be highly subjective and vary widely based on the circumstances, according to Sean Hendrickson, the Applied Skills Division manager at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which runs the state’s law enforcement academies.

During a recent interview with The News Tribune, Hendrickson described how Washington’s new recruits are taught to evaluate and execute a traffic stop.

WSCJTC generally advocates for officers to approach stopped cars from the passenger side if the environment allows for it, Hendrickson said. That method offers protection from traffic, gives the officer more cover if they need to retreat to their car and leaves an armed driver with a smaller window to fire a gun.

A driver’s side approach can leave an officer with fewer escape routes if there is traffic and with little cover if a driver is armed, according to Hendrickson.

Backseat passengers complicate traffic stops further, Hendrickson said.

Standing at the front corner of a sedan is preferable so an officer has a view of all the passengers, but this can leave an officer feeling exposed if they want to retreat to their car, Hendrickson said.

“These are all considerations we’re trying to get the officer to think about,” Hendrickson said.

Because most officers initiate traffic stops alone, training for instances when they draw a firearm focuses on “infusing emotional intelligence” into the situation, Hendrickson said. Remaining calm is a critical component.

That’s also when de-escalation comes in, which Hendrickson defined as using proper patrol methods to slow down the pace of an incident and increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome. He said a common misconception is that de-escalation is about calming someone down.

“It’s technically setting the conditions for effective communication” through tactics such as calling for backup, finding cover or creating distance, Hendrickson said.

Clear, concise, unambiguous commands are key in heightened situations, Hendrickson said.

An officer can put themselves in an ideal position and communicate effectively but still face issues with a person who doesn’t want to cooperate, Hendrickson said.

“We have to acknowledge the fact there’s another human being who has a say over the outcome,” Hendrickson said.

During an interview with The News Tribune, members of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability questioned whether Dolan’s behavior might have heightened the intensity of the January traffic stop.

Traffic stops — the public’s primary way of interacting with police — put drivers and passengers at risk due to a history of law enforcement overemphasizing the danger to officers, according to Enoka Herat, an attorney and police practices expert for the ACLU of Washington, and Leslie Cushman, a former attorney and founding member of the coalition.

“Their frame of mind creates a big risk for the public,” Cushman said. “It seems the officer (Dolan) may have escalated the situation and created an unnecessary risk.”

Police reform advocates also have challenged the necessity of traffic stops like the one in Dolan’s case, which was prompted by a broken mirror and lane travel. The police accountability coalition recently announced a 2023 legislative priority of prohibiting traffic stops for non-moving violations, such as an equipment failure.

“These are the lowest level of offense; these aren’t even crimes,” said Herat. “These shouldn’t be opportunities for law enforcement to fish for other things.”

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs declined to speak with The News Tribune about traffic stops and police patrol tactics.

Who was Moses Portillo?

Dolan didn’t know the man in the backseat of the BMW he pulled over in January. The deputy could see a sideways hat, a liquor bottle and a gun in his lap.

Interviews and court records paint a complex picture of Portillo, a young father.

“He was a good person, a family person, a loving guy to be around. Very loyal,” the mother of Portillo’s daughter and former girlfriend, Kenya Roach, told The News Tribune.

Portillo was raised by an adoptive mother who declined to speak with The News Tribune through her attorney, Clower.

Roach met Portillo in 2016 when they were attending Walker High School, a small alternative high school in the Puyallup School District.

After Portillo graduated in 2017, he worked mostly as a cook at a number of local restaurants and more recently as a landscaper, Roach said. In May 2019, Portillo and Roach’s daughter was born.

“He was a really good dad,” Roach said. “He did whatever he could for her.”

Roach moved to Oklahoma to go to nursing school in December 2020, and Portillo traveled to visit his daughter throughout 2021, Roach said.

At the same time, Portillo was dealing with the aftermath of an arrest on suspicion of drug-distribution charges from December 2020, according to court records.

Sheriff’s deputies responded to his apartment near Puyallup after a bullet was fired into a neighboring unit, according to court documents.

Inside Portillo’s place, deputies found three guns and ammunition on the coffee table, court documents show. Portillo said the guns weren’t his, and two were later found to be reported stolen.

In his bedroom, deputies discovered a brick of cocaine, according to court documents. With a search warrant, law enforcement seized pills, cash and scales.

Following his arrest, Portillo was prohibited from possessing guns and consuming alcohol or drugs in order to stay out of jail pending the resolution of his case, according to court records.

Portillo pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing drugs with intent to distribute on Jan. 4 and was set to be sentenced on Feb. 2, according to court records. Prosecutors were to recommend a 16-month prison sentence as a part of a plea deal.

At the time, Portillo was living with his older brother, who he spent the majority of his time with, according to Roach.

Portillo’s mother told police that her son broke his leg during a fight with his older brother, according to investigative documents.

According to police reports cited in a dismissed court case, the brothers reportedly fought the morning after a New Year’s Eve party. A Pierce County deputy documented that the older brother and their residence were both associated with drug dealing.

Tacoma detectives interrogated the people in the car with Portillo the night he was killed about their whereabouts prior to the traffic stop, their friendship with Portillo and the guns in the car.

The driver remained adamant that she didn’t know Portillo was armed when he asked for a ride home earlier that evening, according to police documents. The other passenger admitted he saw Portillo with both pistols in the car.

Both handguns later showed as reported stolen in law enforcement databases, according to police documents. It’s unclear how Portillo came to possess them.

Dolan was aware of one gun but not its, nor Portillo’s, association with crime.

Herat, the ACLU of Washington attorney, said the presence of a deadly weapon is not enough for a police officer to employ deadly force — there has to be an intent to use it.

“That goes back to the right to own a gun and have it in your car,” Herat said.

The people who gave Portillo a ride told police that he was drinking heavily that night because he was going to prison soon, according to police documents. They thought he was asleep until the traffic stop began.

“(Expletive) was drunk as hell when I went there, couldn’t even talk, you know. And he was like, ‘What’s up, what’s up, what’s up,’” the driver told police in an interview, adding that he also acted “cocky.”

Roach said Portillo typically wasn’t the type of person to stay out late.

“He would always say, ‘Bad things happen after dark,’ ” Roach said.

Portillo was about half a mile from his apartment when Dolan pulled over the BMW in January.

“He was almost home,” Roach said.