A Man Allegedly Fired at Two Kids on a Four-Wheeler Near Tum Tum. Three Hours Later, Four Stevens County Deputies Shot Him Dead.

On the evening of July 2, 2026, a 911 call reached Stevens County dispatchers: someone had just fired a handgun at two children riding a four-wheeler along State Route 291 near the unincorporated community of Tum Tum, roughly 24 miles northwest of Spokane. The children’s mother said they were unhurt but “badly shaken,” according to the sheriff’s office; when her husband went to check on the gunman, deputies say, the man confronted him too.

What followed was a roughly three-hour standoff. Stevens County Sheriff’s Office deputies located the man at his home, tried repeatedly to get him to come out, and — citing his “known history of firearms-related violations” — obtained an arrest warrant. When he finally emerged just after 8:20 p.m. carrying a handgun and refused to comply, a deputy fired a less-lethal round. It didn’t hold him. He raised the gun at the deputies again, and four of them opened fire, killing him.

No deputies were hurt. The dead man’s name has not been released. And under a Washington law voters approved in 2018 specifically because they did not trust police departments to investigate their own shootings, it is the Washington State Patrol — not the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office — now deciding whether four rural deputies had any other choice.

• 4 deputies — fired their weapons and were placed on leave, standard procedure while Washington State Patrol's Independent Investigation Team reviews the shooting · Source: The Spokesman-Review; KOMO News
• 5:22 p.m. to 8:24 p.m. — the roughly three-hour span between the 911 call reporting shots fired at two children and the fatal shooting, as deputies tried to talk the man out of his home · Source: KHQ; KOMO News
• 0 children injured — the two kids on the four-wheeler were not struck, but were “badly shaken,” the sheriff's office said · Source: KHQ
• 2nd shooting in 10 weeks — a Stevens County deputy was shot and wounded — and survived — in an unrelated Suncrest standoff on April 28, 2026 · Source: The Spokesman-Review
• Name withheld — as of this writing, neither Washington State Patrol nor the Stevens County Sheriff's Office had released the identity of the man deputies killed · Source: KOMO News; The Daily Chronicle

Tum Tum is a scattering of homes along Long Lake on the Spokane River, the kind of place people drive to for the reservoir and the campground, not the kind of place that makes the news. Stevens County dispatchers logged the first call at 5:22 p.m. on July 2: a man in the 7200 block of State Route 291 had fired a handgun at two children riding an all-terrain vehicle. According to the sheriff’s office, the children were not hit, but the shots came close enough that their mother called it in immediately. Her husband went to confront the gunman directly and was met with the same weapon.

Two deputies responded first and tried to make contact with the man at his residence but could not reach him. Investigators say that, based on the circumstances of the call and the man’s prior record of firearms-related violations, they sought and obtained an arrest warrant rather than simply walking away. None of the outlets that covered the shooting — KOMO, KREM, KXLY, KHQ, or the Spokesman-Review — reported what those prior violations were, only that they existed and factored into the decision to escalate from a welfare-style contact to a warrant service.

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Two more deputies joined the scene as the evening wore on, bringing the total to four. Rather than force entry, the sheriff’s office says deputies built a tactical plan around the warrant and waited. For nearly three hours, nothing moved. Then, at about 8:20 p.m., the man came out of the house carrying a handgun. He ignored deputies’ commands and began advancing toward them.

A deputy fired a less-lethal round — described in reporting as a bean-bag or foam projectile — which was, in the Spokesman-Review’s phrasing, “initially effective.” It did not last. The man raised his handgun toward the deputies a second time, and four of them fired multiple rounds, killing him at the scene. No deputy was struck. The four who fired their weapons were placed on what the sheriff’s office called critical-incident leave — standard, paid administrative leave pending review, not a finding of wrongdoing or an admission of any kind.

The reason a state trooper, not a Stevens County sergeant, is reviewing this shooting traces back to 2018. That November, Washington voters passed Initiative 940, which barred law-enforcement agencies from investigating their own officers’ use of deadly force and required an independent agency to do it instead. The Legislature implemented it through SHB 1064: any incident where an officer’s use of force causes death or substantial bodily harm now triggers a mandatory outside investigation.

Washington actually runs two separate mechanisms to satisfy that mandate. The older one is the Washington State Patrol’s own Independent Investigation Team, which has handled outside reviews of deadly-force cases for years and is the one now working the Tum Tum shooting. The newer one is the Office of Independent Investigations (OII), a standalone civilian agency the Legislature created in 2021 specifically to take deadly-force reviews out of any law-enforcement agency’s hands entirely, including WSP’s. OII has been rolling out region by region since December 2024 — rural western Washington first, Pierce County starting in May 2026, ten central Washington counties from Okanogan to Walla Walla in what the agency designates Region 5. Rural northeastern Washington, where Stevens County sits, is not yet on that list. Until OII expands there, WSP’s Independent Investigation Team remains the outside check — exactly as it was for the Suncrest shooting ten weeks earlier.

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Stevens County is rural eastern Washington — about 46,000 people spread across timber and farm country north of Spokane, with Colville as the county seat. It is a very different political environment than the Seattle stories this site usually covers, and the record here is worth stating plainly rather than assumed. Sheriff Brad Manke has led the department since 2018 and returned for another term unopposed, with no challenger filing against him. Washington elects sheriffs on a nonpartisan ballot, so there is no official party label attached to the office — but the county’s posture on gun policy is well documented. In 2019, Manke publicly said his office would not enforce Initiative 1639, the statewide gun-control measure that raised the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic rifle to 21, joining roughly 22 of Washington’s 39 sheriffs who took the same position. I-1639 passed statewide with 59 percent support; Stevens County voters rejected it, 73 percent to 27 percent.

No governor, attorney general, or state legislator has issued a public statement on the Tum Tum shooting as of this writing, and there is no indication this case has become a partisan flashpoint the way some urban officer-involved shootings do. That absence is itself a fact worth recording: this is a story about a small department’s second major shooting in ten weeks, reviewed under a state accountability law that has not yet finished rolling out to the part of Washington where it happened — not (so far) a story anyone in Olympia has chosen to weigh in on.

The man deputies killed was never charged with anything, and he cannot be tried, convicted, or given a chance to defend himself now. Every outlet that reported this story described him only as a suspect — “the man,” per the sheriff’s account — and this page does the same. His name has not been released by WSP or the sheriff’s office as of July 9, and none of the seven outlets that covered the shooting have independently identified him either.

Two other gaps are worth flagging. First, the specifics of his “known history of firearms-related violations” have not been detailed publicly — we don’t know if that meant prior convictions, a protection-order violation, or something else, and readers should not assume any particular offense. Second, Stevens County deputies have carried body-worn cameras since a five-year program the sheriff’s office funded around 2022, but no outlet has reported whether footage from this specific incident exists or will be released as part of WSP’s review. WSP said it will publish weekly updates through its Government and Media Relations Office; this page will be updated if the man’s identity, the warrant’s underlying charge, or body-camera footage becomes public.

A man allegedly fired a handgun at two children on a four-wheeler outside Tum Tum, Washington. Deputies spent three hours trying to talk him out of his home before he emerged armed and, police say, raised the gun at them after a less-lethal round failed to stop him. Four Stevens County deputies fired, and he died at the scene. Under a law Washington voters wrote specifically to keep police from investigating themselves, the Washington State Patrol — not the sheriff’s office whose deputies fired — is now the agency deciding whether that was justified, using an older accountability mechanism because the state’s newer, fully independent one has not yet reached this corner of Washington. We’ll update this page when WSP releases findings, when the man is identified, or if body-camera footage surfaces.

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Last updated July 9, 2026