The Columbia County sheriff’s deputy who killed a man following a car chase last week had previously been dismissed by the office for failing a drug test and had left a different police department over performance problems, records show.
On July 20, Cpl. Seann Luedke was pursuing Kyle Graham, who had earlier eluded Washington State Patrol officers during a chase. Graham lost control of the Kia Optima he was driving and careened down an embankment. Graham, 47, was armed with a gun when Luedke found him after the crash, and the deputy shot and killed him, Oregon State Police said.
Records obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show that a lieutenant in the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office described Luedke’s employment history as “problematic” in 2021, the second time Luedke sought to become a deputy there, but the office hired him anyway.
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Luedke’s attorney said in an email that it would be inappropriate for him or his client to comment before the investigation into the shooting is complete.
Luedke had resigned from the St. Helens Police Department in March 2020 to avoid being fired for failing to complete 20 police reports, including multiple death investigations, according to a Department of Public Safety Standards and Training memo. His failure to write up a report on a domestic-violence case caused a delay when the victim sought a protective order, according to the memo.
Luedke joined the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office shortly after he resigned from the St. Helens Police Department. He was hired as a temporary employee in April 2020 and received a conditional offer of permanent employment on June 4, according to the offer letter, signed by Sheriff Brian Pixley.
About two weeks after that offer, the sheriff’s office learned that Luedke’s drug test came back “low positive for marijuana” but that Luedke’s “explanation was plausible and I agreed,” the sheriff wrote in a June 25, 2020, letter to Luedke. But a second drug screening came back invalid “due to the presence of ‘synthetic urine,’” according to the sheriff’s letter.
Luedke also apparently failed a psychological examination.
After Luedke had worked on a temporary basis for about two months, the sheriff ended the deputy’s employment.
A subsequent sheriff’s office investigation concluded that Luedke couldn’t have substituted the sample without being seen and that the anomalous urinalysis result could have been the result of “overhydration rather than tampering,” Pixley said in an emailed response to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive.
When Luedke applied to work at the sheriff’s office again the year after his rejection over the drug test, Luedke wrote that he was “in process for full time employment when I failed the psych test and tested positive for marijuana in very small amounts from” an ointment.
Staff flagged his application. “Luedke’s past looks like it could be problematic,” Lt. Levi Raethke wrote in a Feb. 23, 2021, email to another lieutenant, records show. “Do you normally continue with a background or just call it quits now?”
The hiring process continued and the sheriff’s office hired Luedke on Sept. 15, 2021, according to a letter signed by the sheriff.
The sheriff acknowledged the lieutenant’s internal email that voiced concerns about Luedke’s employment history and said that, after a full review, the office concluded Luedke met the necessary standards to be hired.
“Every hiring decision we make is weighed carefully and based on a thorough assessment of available facts,” Pixley wrote. “Since joining CCSO, Corporal Luedke has served the community with professionalism and integrity. He has earned the trust of his peers and supervisors.”
Luedke is on standard leave while Oregon State Police investigate the shooting earlier this month.
“Corporal Luedke acted in accordance with his training and duties during a difficult and dynamic situation,” Pixley wrote of the fatal shooting of Graham. “We continue to have full confidence in his conduct and capabilities as a law enforcement professional.”
Graham’s family members have questioned the circumstances of his death, while acknowledging Graham’s troubled history.
In 2010, Graham was sentenced to 10 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter after beating and stabbing a man to death. He spent three years in solitary confinement in prison, his girlfriend, Marie Berry, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. He has said he was wrongfully accused.
Graham had been doing well before his death, Berry said. He had gotten baptized last year and was studying robotics at Clark College.
But he continued to struggle with addiction, which Graham’s brother, Brian Canton, indicated may have ultimately led to the fatal incident.
Graham came to Berry’s home around 6 a.m. Saturday, told her he’d been chased by police and asked if he could stay. Reluctantly, she let him in, she said. Still at her place, he texted her later that night.
“Plz help me I want to get clean I’m not ready to give up,” Graham wrote Berry.
The next day, after Graham had left Berry’s home to go to Vancouver, Berry said she saw on social media that there had been a high-speed chase in the area.
“Oh my god, please no,” Berry said she thought, already fearing and suspecting he was the driver.
“Are you ok?” she texted him.
She never got an answer.
