Olympia officer ‘offended’ by media portrayal of shooting, won’t immediately return to work

Officer Ryan Donald plans to return to the Olympia Police Department when the time is right. He doesn’t know when that time will be, and he won’t likely let the media know.

“The media has betrayed him; newspapers, TVs. They said he [shot] these two men for stealing beer, which is not one bit close to the truth,” said Donald’s lawyer Saxon Rodgers at a news conference Wednesday.

“He is so offended by what has been in news media across the board. He doesn’t want anything to do with them,” he said.

Related: The maddening revision of the Olympia shooting

Rodgers spoke with the media shortly after it was announced by the Thurston County Prosecutor’s office that no charges will be brought against Donald, who is white, for the May shooting of two young black men.

Rodgers and Donald were instructed to remain silent in the wake of the shooting, according to the attorney. In the meantime, there were a string of protests in Olympia with many claiming the shooting was racially motivated. And some media reports continued the storyline that the two men were shot for stealing beer.

“He’s been hurt by it,” Rodgers said.

“If this would have happened before all these racial shootings around the country in Baltimore and Ferguson, I don’t think we would have had any protesters, anarchists or anyone else,” he said. “It’s a tough time because those things are real and they are happening, and they are racially motivated. But in other communities, not in this community.”

An investigation sent to the prosecutor concluded that Donald’s account was accurate. The two suspects allegedly attempted to steal beer at a Safeway. They assaulted a store clerk by throwing a box of beer at them while making their getaway. Then, when spotted on a nearby street around 1 a.m., they allegedly attacked Donald with their skateboards. Donald responded by shooting them.

Thurston County Prosecutor Jon Tunheim said investigators looked at the scene as three separate incidents. That included the area behind Donald’s vehicle where grass was trampled by recent activity; the portion of roadway where Chaplin was shot, where his skateboard was found along with shell casings; and the use of force against Thompson.

Though there was speculation that Donald shot Chaplin in the back, Tunheim said a medical examination shows that is not the case. Bullet wounds were consistent with Chaplin being shot in the chest and the side, according to Tunheim. The wound in Chaplin’s back was found to be an exit wound.

“[Donald] was being held and being dragged to the ground, and was getting ready to have his head split with a skateboard,” Rodgers said. “He also had the opportunity there, and later, to shoot and kill them, if he wanted to. But he’s trained not to. He’s trained to hit center mass, which is frontal (shooting).”

“He believed if they got his gun, they would shoot him,” he said.

Furthermore, statements from Chaplin and Thompson were brief and seemed to be “incomplete,” according to Tunheim.

“When [police] talked to them in the hospital, they both denied being in the Safeway,” Rodgers said. “Then they were told they had video of the whole thing, and they clammed up.”

“They never once did anything that he ordered them to do from the get-go. If they would have just stopped … they would have gotten a ticket. In all likelihood, they are not going to drag people down for stealing beer at 1 in the morning, and go through all that. They’d just give them a ticket,” he said. “That’s what always perplexed me. Why did this get to that level?”

MyNorthwest’s Kipp Robertson contributed to this report.