“I’m behind a black Honda Fit,” Pullman Police Officer Mike Crow said into his radio as he drove by the Stephenson Towers and headed into Pullman. He’d been given a description of the suspect and the vehicle, as well as the license plate number.   

But Officer Crow didn’t turn on his lights or siren.

It was about 3 p.m. on Jan. 10. The driver was John Lee, the suspect in the Moscow shootings that left three dead and one wounded.

 “We’re just following the car,” Pullman Police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said, pointing at the video on his computer screen. “We don’t want a firefight downtown.”

The chase 

Crow was one of two Pullman officers on duty when the shooting occurred. He was instructed to go to WA-270, between Pullman and Moscow.

“It just seemed to me that he was driving around Moscow, and I never expected him to come to Pullman,” Crow said.  

Officer Aaron Breshears arrived three minutes early for his 3 p.m. shift and heard the radio traffic.

“We walked into briefing and one of the receptionists came in and told us, ‘There’s been a shooting,’” Breshears said. The swing shift officers jumped into action, grabbing their rifles and running out to the cars, he said.

Breshears and Crow, both 40, have known each other since they went to the police academy in Spokane. They have been on the Pullman force for 16 years.

Fittingly, Breshears was the No. 2 car during the pursuit.

He caught up to Lee and Crow who were stopped at a red light at Kamiaken Street.

“(Lee) was calm up to that point,” Breshears said. “We could definitely see him doing stuff in the car when we were sitting (by Kamiaken) and I was kinda going through the worst-case scenario.”

Crow said Lee was reaching behind himself and shifting around.

The officers were expecting something bad to happen, he said. However, Lee continued driving normally.

Crow said he planned to make a traffic stop outside of Pullman at the old Daily Grind location. However, when Crow turned his lights on, then the siren, Lee did not slow down. Officers chased the suspect for approximately 22 minutes, hitting speeds upwards of 100 miles per hour. Fog was settling on Pullman, but the roadway was still visible. At one point, Lee lost control and went off the road and spun.

“I was thinking, ‘Pursuit’s over,’” Crow said. Lee recovered though and kept going.

Officers followed Lee through Colfax at approximately 60 mph. Outside of Colfax, the fog worsened.

Crow said he didn’t really think about the driving conditions so much as trying to keep the suspect in sight despite the fog.

“There were a couple times when I lost sight of him and that made me want to go faster trying to find him,” Crow said.

Breshears said he felt that the roadway was slick a couple times and that the fog was thick enough that he lost sight of Crow.

“I’m the number two car, so it’s my job to keep track of (Crow),” he said. “So at that point I was going 115 trying to catch up. That definitely made me a little uneasy.”

Crow said he had never been involved in a high speed chase before that day. While Breshears said he had been involved in pursuits before, they weren’t nearly as fast.

Oncoming traffic was heavy the weekend before the start of the semester and many drivers couldn’t see police until Officer Crow sped by down the middle of the road.

“It was nerve wracking,” Crow said.

If Lee hadn’t been the suspect in a mass shooting spree, Breshears said they probably wouldn’t have continued the pursuit for fear of posing a greater risk to the public due to driving at such high speeds in poor conditions.

Finally, the Honda went off the left side of the road, flipping end over end.

“(The initial relief) is that he finally crashed and stopped and we could get him now,” Breshears said. “Then high stress again because he’s in the car and he’s armed.”

Breshears added that the highest risk point was when only he and Crow had caught up to Lee because a suspect might think he can take on just two officers.

Within minutes, though, there were 10 cops at the scene, Breshears said.  

Officers grabbed their rifles and got out of their vehicles, shouting, “Put your hands up!”

They took Lee into custody as Crow and other officers approached the car, where they found, scattered in the grass, an assortment of license plates that appeared to have fallen out of the car during the crash. They also found five guns inside the car.

The aftermath

“To me, it didn’t really start to affect me until the next day,” Crow said. “You’re kinda still on that high and it’s cool and you’re still talking about it. The following days I was not sleeping well.”

Crow said it took him two weeks to get to the point where he wasn’t thinking about it and could sleep normally.

Breshears said he didn’t have quite as strong a reaction to the incident.

“There were a few nights that I didn’t sleep great. It resolved itself fairly quickly,” he said.

Breshears said he would think about the worst-case scenarios that could have happened. “But then I played it backwards to what didn’t happen,” he said.

No one was hurt in the chase and officers did not have to use lethal force, even though Crow said they were sure they would have to shoot Lee.

“As cops, you don’t want to toot your own horn,” Breshears said. “But we did a good job and we caught a murderer. That doesn’t happen a lot in your career.”

Crow said he’s grateful that they caught him and that Moscow has a suspect. “Realistically, we could still be looking for the guy so … I’m pretty proud.”