Washington County has paid $800,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the widow of a Tigard man who sheriff’s deputies shot and killed in 2018 after ramming his pickup with an unmarked, armored vehicle.
Remi Sabbe, 54, died on Jan. 12, 2018, after Washington County deputies responded to a 911 call placed at 1:33 p.m. from a neighbor, saying a pickup was driving erratically and “making a mess of” a rural field that was owned by Sabbe.
The fatal shooting occurred more than two hours later in a Sherwood-area field on the property of Sabbe’s childhood home after a prolonged response by the Washington County Tactical Negotiations Team but with no prior verbal communication between officers and Sabbe.
Remi Sabbe’s wife, April Sabbe, said she was pleased to learn that the sheriff’s office got rid of the V150 tank-like vehicle that was used to ram her husband’s pickup.
It was replaced with an armored vehicle that is clearly marked and has both short- and long-range communication equipment, according to Sabbe’s lawyer Louren Oliveros and the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s office also provided additional training to its tactical team on the use of armored vehicles.
The county board of commissioners in December had directed the county counsel to finalize the settlement after a mediator helped both sides reach agreement, according to county records.
After the initial 911 call, the neighbor had called back minutes after, adding that Sabbe was driving the pickup, was “solid drunk” and “belligerent” and that he thought he might have heard a gunshot. Within an hour, about 30 officers pulled up to the property in marked police cars with overhead lights flashing. About an hour after that, two armored vehicles entered Sabbe’s field.
Sabbe was upset over a recent burglary at the house and had been drinking, relatives told police. An officer driving an unmarked Commando V150 armored carrier approached Sabbe’s pickup. The officer later testified that the officers wanted to speak with Sabbe, but the eight officers inside the carrier had no way to do that, according to a federal court opinion.
The unmarked armored vehicle lacked a public address system, according to court records.
Instead, the armored vehicle — which resembles a tank and weighs about 8.5 tons — intentionally collided twice with the rear of Sabbe’s pickup in a “pursuit intervention technique,” or PIT maneuver, a tactic that involves striking the bumper of a car to try to get it to spin to a stop.
After the first strike, Sabbe’s pickup spun about 180 degrees and he drove away from the armored vehicle and came to a stop. As he opened the door and tried to step out, the officers in the armored vehicle struck his pickup a second time on the passenger side, which caused the driver’s door to slam into Sabbe’s left leg, according to court records.
Moments later, police heard a gunshot.
Cpl. Cade Edwards leaned out of the armored vehicle and reported seeing Sabbe “maneuvering a rifle” toward them before he fired one shot at Sabbe, according to court records.
Deputy Earl Brown testified in a deposition that he emerged from a hatch at the top of the armored vehicle and saw Sabbe’s rifle pointing at them before he fired multiple shots at the pickup’s passenger side windows.
Brown fired his own rifle at Sabbe, hitting him 18 times in the chest, abdomen and arms. Sabbe died at the scene. An AR-15 rifle was found on Sabbe but there was no physical evidence it had been fired, according to court records.
The suit, filed in Washington County Circuit Court, alleged sheriff’s deputies were negligent in trespassing on Remi Sabbe’s property without a warrant, executing the PIT maneuver on Sabbe’s pickup, failing to de-escalate the situation, and in ultimately shooting Sabbe. It also alleged the deputies engaged in assault and battery.
The state case had been on hold until a ruling in the separate but parallel federal suit was issued. In October 2023, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split ruling, upheld the dismissal of the wrongful death suit in federal court that challenged the fatal shooting of Sabbe.
The majority in the 2 to 1 appellate decision ruled that the officers’ warrantless entry onto the Sabbes’ property wasn’t legal, but it also wasn’t “closely enough tied” to Remi Sabbe’s death to hold the officers legally responsible for his death.
But in a strong dissent, 9th U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha S. Berzon called the suit “a case study in disproportionate law enforcement response” and argued it should have been allowed to proceed to trial to hold the officers accountable. Because Sabbe didn’t point a rifle or shoot at the officers, his widow’s lawyer was entitled to argue to a jury that the fatal shooting was excessive force, her dissent said.
There was no probable cause that Sabbe was even committing a crime, according to Berzon. A sergeant driving the armored carrier, in his deposition, acknowledged that Sabbe had the right to possess and discharge a gun on his own property.
Oregon law allows the possession of a gun within a person’s residence or place of business without a permit or license and generally permits shooting on private property that is not within city limits, such as the rural field in question, the dissent said.
“The officers’ use of an unmarked, military-grade vehicle to initiate a violent confrontation with an individual who was on his own property and posed no obvious risk to the officers or the public was unprecedented precisely because the response was so miscalibrated to the threat posed,” Berzon wrote.
County officials confirmed the settlement.
The V150 that was used to ram Remi Sabbe’s pickup truck was a military surplus vehicle that the sheriff’s office received in partnership with the FBI, according to the sheriff’s office. It has been returned to the FBI.
The sheriff’s office since purchased an armored rescue vehicle “built explicitly for civilian public safety,” in place of retrofitting an old military vehicle, said Kendall Hazel, a sheriff’s deputy and agency spokesperson.
The sheriff’s office also has trained its tactical and incident management team members on how to safely operate its armored vehicles, Hazel said.
April Sabbe said the case should serve as a warning to others that police use of excessive force “can happen to anyone and it happens in a flash.”
Of the settlement amount, she said, “It’s never enough. It’s never going to bring him back.”
— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, [email protected], follow her on X @maxoregonian, on Bluesky @maxbernstein.bsky.social or on LinkedIn.