The man who was shot by Clark County sheriff’s deputies Thursday night is a 30-year-old Black man, his family confirmed to OPB on Friday.
Jenoah Donald, of Vancouver, was shot in the unincorporated community of Hazel Dell, Washington. He is still being admitted to the hospital, investigators said Saturday. The shooting happened less than a mile from where a drug task force Kevin Peterson Jr. killed near three months ago.
A photo provided by the family of Jenoah Donald (30). Family members confirmed Friday that sheriff’s deputies in Clark County shot Donald.
Contributed by family of Jenoah Donald
Donald’s mother, Susan Zawacky, said she knew very little about the events that led to her son’s shooting, which is being investigated by an independent team under a relatively new state law.
“We just do not get answers,” Zawacky said. “I have about as much information as you.”
“I do not know how I feel now, to be honest with you,” Zawacky later added.
According to the Vancouver chapter of the NAACP, Donald remains life supportive. On Saturday, the organization issued a statement saying Donald had died, but law enforcement officials released an update confirming that Donald was still in the hospital.
The family called for no demonstrations to be held, the NAACP chapter of Vancouver said in a statement. Such protests took place regularly in the aftermath of police killings of Black Americans.
“They are shocked and trying to grieve,” the organization said. “Any public protests currently being held would be contrary to the family’s wishes.”
According to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement officers began a traffic stop near the intersection of Northeast 68th Street and Northeast 2nd Avenue at 7:41 p.m. The agency did not provide details on what started the interaction.
The people who were shot were transported to a nearby hospital in a critical condition, according to the press release. A GoFundMe for Donald appears Friday afternoon to raise funeral expenses.
“(Donald’s family) has been informed that the doctors can do nothing more,” wrote the organizer of the fundraiser. “It’s an unexpected tragedy and the family is hoping to raise money to cover the cost of his funeral to bring him to rest.”
On Friday, neither the Clark County Sheriff nor the investigators released new information. It is unknown who the deputies were who fired, how many shots they fired and why officers came in contact with Donald.
There were four deputies involved, and one of them fired their weapon, the sheriff said Saturday.
According to neighbors, police remained at the scene until the night.
Steve Dean, a retired 70-year-old, said he was watching television in his basement when he heard a gunshot. Then he heard a collision in his wooden fence. When he looked outside, he saw marked sheriff’s office vehicles and a car in his fence.
“I could see the fence was turned over,” he said. Dean said he could not see the driver, only his feet. According to him, law enforcement officers told him to go back to his house when he walked outside.
Across the street, neighbor Stephanie Bates said she saw nothing but later learned that a car was driving across her lawn and driving north before driving across Northeast 68th Avenue and colliding with Dean’s fence.
Bates says when she looked out of her window, she saw three law enforcement vehicles – none of them looking unnoticed or undercover.
“The person has not yet been taken out of the car, and they were basically trying to get the person out of the car to the gurney,” she said.
Like Dean, she said law enforcement officers told her and her family to stay indoors.
The shooting comes about three months after Clark County Sheriff’s Office delegates shot dead 21-year-old Kevin Peterson Jr., who was also black, during a drug bust, as the OPB first reported.
The investigation into the shooting was completed at the end of November and was first introduced to the public in installments in December. A criminal review of the case is still ongoing.