‘No way, shape or form done properly’
Questions surround federal task force’s killing of activist in Washington state
Michael Reinoehl was on the run.
A few days after a shooting left a far-right Trump supporter dead on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Reinoehl, an antifa activist who had been named in the news media as a focus of the investigation, feared vigilantes were after him, not to mention the police. Even some of his close friends did not know where he was.
But the authorities knew. On Sept. 3, 120 miles north of Portland, Reinoehl was getting into his station wagon when a pair of unmarked SUVs roared through the quiet streets, screeching to a halt in front of his bumper. Members of a U.S. Marshals task force jumped out and unleashed a hail of bullets that shattered windows, whizzed past bystanders and left Reinoehl dead in the street.
Attorney General William Barr trumpeted the operation as a “significant accomplishment” that removed a “violent agitator.” The officers had opened fire, he said, when Reinoehl “attempted to escape arrest” and “produced a firearm” during the encounter. But a reconstruction of what happened that night, based on the accounts of people who witnessed the confrontation and the preliminary findings of investigators, produces a much different picture — one that raises questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Reinoehl before killing him.
In interviews with 22 people who were near the scene, all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. In their official statements, not yet made public, the officers offered differing accounts of whether they saw Reinoehl with a weapon. One told investigators he thought he saw Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle before the firing began, but two others said they did not.
Reinoehl did have a .380caliber handgun on him when he was killed, according to the county sheriff’s team that is running a criminal homicide investigation into Reinoehl’s death. But the weapon was found in his pocket.
An AR-style rifle was found apparently untouched in a bag in his car.
Five witnesses said in interviews that the gunfire began the instant the vehicles arrived. None of them saw Reinoehl holding a weapon. A single shell casing of the same caliber as the handgun he was carrying was found inside his car.
Garrett Louis, who watched the shooting begin while trying to get his 8-year-old son out of the line of fire, said the officers arrived with such speed and violence that he initially assumed they were drug dealers gunning down a foe — until he saw their law enforcement vests.
“I respect cops to the utmost, but things were definitely in no way, shape or form done properly,” Louis said.
The U.S. Marshals Service declined to comment for this article, citing the pending investigation. The agency previously said that it had attempted to “peacefully arrest” Reinoehl and that he had threatened the lives of law enforcement officers.
President Donald Trump, who has described the racial justice protests that have roiled the nation as the work of lawless criminals, praised the operation.
“This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him,” the president told Fox News. “And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be.”
Reinoehl had joined protesters in Portland in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by the Minneapolis police in May, writing online that they were waging a necessary war with the potential to “fix everything.” He devoted himself to the Black Lives Matter movement and once touted himself as “100% ANTIFA all the way.”
Reinoehl, a 48-year-old contractor and professional snowboarder, had run into trouble with the law in June, when he was cited for driving under the influence of a controlled substance and having an unlicensed firearm in the car. Later, during the protests, the police arrested him and cited him for carrying a loaded firearm in a public place, but prosecutors dropped the charges.
When the protests against the police got underway in Portland, he carved a niche for himself providing security, watching for agitators. After a caravan of supporters of Trump arrived in Portland on Aug. 29 and began clashing with the protesters, a security camera showed Reinoehl keeping an eye on one of them — Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer who was walking with a can of bear repellent and an expandable baton.
Seconds later, a separate livestream video captured Danielson being shot, and The Oregonian newspaper reported later that Reinoehl was under investigation in the case. In an interview while he was in hiding that Vice News broadcast on Sept. 3, Reinoehl said he had fired in self-defense.
“That shot felt like the beginning of a war,” he said.
On the day the interview aired, officers with the U.S. Marshals’ Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force met for an intelligence briefing.
The team, which included a mix of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, already knew Reinoehl was staying in a brick complex of apartments in Lacey, Washington. The task force had information from an informant, passed on by the Portland police, about Reinoehl’s location and possession of firearms, said Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, who leads the team investigating Reinoehl’s death.
Though the Portland police had yet to issue a warrant for Reinoehl’s arrest, the task force prepared to move in.
That evening, outside the apartment complex where the police say Reinoehl had been staying, the neighborhood was quiet.
Reinoehl left the apartment and walked toward his vehicle, parked along the street roughly 100 feet away. Two officers positively identified Reinoehl, who proceeded to start the car, said Brady, who shared some of the initial findings of the investigation with The New York Times. They decided to make an immediate arrest, the officers told investigators, in part to avoid a high-speed chase.
The four officers who were riding in the SUVs said in their statements to Thurston County sheriff’s investigators that they shouted “Stop! Police!” before opening fire, Brady said.
But the officers gave conflicting stories about what led them to begin firing. One reported that he saw Reinoehl, inside the vehicle, raise “what they perceived to be a gun,” Brady said. Two other officers said they only saw Reinoehl make “furtive movements” toward the center console, he said.