Self-defense or murder? Vancouver man charged in death of 19-year-old

It was early on a Tuesday morning on Jan. 29 before the sun had come up. That’s when Sean Doucette says he was coming home from his job of four years as an armed guard for First Response.

According to his attorney, Doucette was confronted by a man in the street who he saw breaking into his family’s car.

It was his wife who first called 911. “My husband was talking to him in the street,” Rachel Doucette told the operator. “He just charged at my husband, and my husband is a security guard and he just got home from work. And he pulled his gun. And the guy said – my husband said, ‘get down on the ground’ and the guy just charged at him.”

The coroner’s report would later reveal 19-year-old Iosuf Dumitrash was shot several times in the chest. It would seem to support Doucette’s claim of self defense.

Less than a minute into the call, the 911 operator asks Rachel Doucette to perform CPR. “We need to try and help him if he needs help. Can you tell if he’s awake, conscious, breathing, anything?”

She responds, “He’s moving, it looks like he may have just stopped breathing.”

But, Despite several attempts by the emergency operator, aid is never given.

Eventually a neighbor and even an off-duty police officer show up at the scene.

“I need you to listen carefully. I’m going to tell you how to give him chest compressions. OK? I need you to get the phone as close to him as possible. Do not hang up, OK? Be right by him now,” the operator instructed.

“Yeah, I’m on 911 now,” the wife appears to say to someone else nearby.

“Ma’am, if he’s not breathing, we need to try to help him until the paramedics get there, OK?” asked the operator.

“I have people here. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m going to tell you what to do. You need to get as close to him as possible and tell me when you’re right by him. Are you right by him now?”

“I am right next to him.”

The operator finally gives instructions for chest compressions.

Dumitrash would eventually die from his wounds, leaving his family and investigators to wonder what happened. Doucette’s attorney maintains his client fired in self defense.

But the Clark County Attorney’s office is now charging him with second degree murder. Dumitrash’s older brother, Sergey, tells KPTV in Portland his brother was likely walking to his house. He lives just a few blocks from where Iosuf died.

“Shooting somebody in the street four times? That’s not a defense, that’s shoot to kill,” said Sergey.

KIRO Radio has contacted the county attorney and the Vancouver Police Department but they say this is still an open investigation, and are not going to comment.