The detectives lost sight of the man after he headed into a bedroom at the Forest Grove home.

They heard the slide on a semi-automatic handgun move back, then forward.

"Stop!" they shouted. "Don't!"

Detective Charles McCutchen drew his gun and pointed it at the bedroom door from the living area. He still couldn't see the man.

Then came a single gunshot from inside the room.

McCutchen yelled at the man. He scanned the outside of the bedroom door and walls, to see if any bullets came through, but he didn't see any holes. He and fellow detective Scott King backed out of the home, took cover behind two cars at a neighbor's house and called for back-up.

Cops from three agencies descended on the home.

King called the man's cellphone twice. It went straight to voicemail. Police called out to the man on a PA system three times, but got no response.

A police robot was sent into the home and into the bedroom. Its video showed the man lying on the bed. A handgun was on the floor.

With guns out, police entered the home. A sergeant yelled for the man, but he got no reply. The sergeant ordered an officer to fire a beanbag round into the man's leg to see whether he would move. He didn't.

Police then went into the room. The man had a wound underneath his chin. The sergeant checked his wrist for a pulse, but found none.

Investigators determined the man shot himself once in the head while the detectives were just feet away.

Court records and police reports show the detectives missed warning signs that the man was on edge and knew he had access to guns.

An internal review identified their mistakes: The main one was letting a potentially suicidal man with access to guns out of their view. But police also noted that the case was complicated.

Supervisors found that McCutchen and King violated no policies and the department didn't make any changes in response to the death, said Capt. Mike Herb, a Forest Grove police spokesman. But McCutchen and King were counseled on how they could have handled the call better.

"If we had a crystal ball, we absolutely would have handled things differently," Herb said. "The challenge is balancing their privacy rights and officer safety."

***

A sexual assault investigation brought McCutchen and King to the home late one afternoon in March. They were there to talk to 40-year-old Timothy Spiering about abuse allegations that his former girlfriend made against him.

The alleged abuse had occurred three days earlier after she drank two tall cans of Mike's Hard Lemonade and took Ambien, police reports and court records say. She realized what had happened when she awoke, she said.

While she was making the report later that day, March 20, she also asked police to check on Spiering.

The couple had broken up two weeks earlier, she explained to King, and that day, she heard the sound of a gun "cocking" while he was inside their bedroom. She went into the room and asked what he was doing. He replied that he wouldn't "do it" with her there. She told King she believed he was talking about suicide.

Since that time, he hadn't made any other suicidal statements, she said. But the last time she saw him, he was drunk and she worried about his wellbeing.

Police asked her more about him. He regularly drank an 18-pack of beer and small bottle of Southern Comfort in one day, she told King. He recently lost his job at a mill. She had turned down a marriage proposal from him on Christmas Day. And he knew she had feelings for someone else.

They had no history of violence between them, she told the detective.

Police decided against checking on Spiering because they intended to investigate him for the abuse allegation, according to police reports.

Then on Monday, March 23, the ex-girlfriend filed a restraining order against Spiering and wanted him out of the house. In response to a question asking whether any factors indicated he could harm others or himself, she wrote "deep depression" and "suicidal thoughts." She also wrote that she was in danger because of his "mental instability" and that she "can not trust what he will do - guns in home."

She requested that Forest Grove police serve the restraining order.

***

It was just before 3:50 p.m. that Monday when McCutchen and King arrived at the house.

They interviewed Spiering about the sex assault allegation outside on the porch. The detectives were friendly with him, a recording of the interview shows.

Spiering spoke slowly. He took long pauses between his statements while he explained his side of what happened.

The detectives asked Spiering to describe his break-up. "Uh, you got 10 hours?" he replied with a laugh.

He told the detectives he was trying to figure out where he was going to move. He was confused by the accusations against him.

"I did not expect you to show up," he said. "I've been talking to family members and trying to get my roots back, and figure out what I'm going to do next."

At 4:14 p.m., the detectives stopped the interview. They didn't plan to arrest him.

According to reports, the detectives then served Spiering with the restraining order and explained it: He couldn't have his handgun or rifle. And he needed to leave the house.

When the detectives mentioned the gun restriction, Spiering appeared agitated, according to reports. He said he hadn't been convicted.

Spiering tried to shut his front door on the detectives, but McCutchen caught the door with his foot and said he wasn't done explaining the order. McCutchen told him he was concerned that Spiering tried to go inside after hearing about the firearm restriction. McCutchen tried to hand Spiering the order, but he wouldn't take it.

The detectives told Spiering he had about 20 minutes to gather his belongings to leave, and they'd wait for him. Spiering again tried to close the door on the cops, and again, McCutchen blocked it. They told Spiering that they needed to come into the house with him. He gestured for them to follow.

One of the detectives asked where his guns were. Spiering pointed to a door to a sunroom where the rifle was kept. Where was the handgun? McCutchen asked. In his bedroom, Spiering replied, but he didn't say exactly where.

Spiering seemed to walk around without purpose. McCutchen and King lost sight of him, but he quickly reappeared.

He made a call to a friend, but didn't reach anyone. He offered the detectives pizza. He told them he'd recently drunk three cans of beer.

McCutchen and King told Spiering to quickly gather his things. He was dressed in sweatpants and slippers and went back into the bedroom, started to take off his pants and began closing the door. The detectives told him to leave it open, and he did - mostly, their reports say.

As Spiering was changing, he leaned forward behind the door, and the detectives first lost sight of his upper body, then couldn't see him at all, they wrote. They heard the gun's slide, then the single shot.

At 4:46 p.m., they radioed that a shot was fired.

***

The police investigation into what happened was completed within days.

It was clear that Spiering had shot himself, the detective who investigated the death wrote in his report. A deputy medical examiner responded to the scene to investigate, but no autopsy was performed, police said.

Spiering was found wearing a gray-and-yellow baseball hat, an orange sweatshirt, gray boxers and white socks. His brown slippers rested on the floor next to his right foot.

He had powder burns and an entry wound underneath his chin and exit wound on the back of his head, according to the police report. There was a gun next to his left foot. There was one bullet hole in the ceiling.

A funeral home took his body, and police notified his family.

Afterward, Forest Grove police did a separate internal review of what happened, which is standard after a serious, traumatic call. They looked at police reports and spoke to McCutchen and King, who is now a sergeant.

The call was hard on the two detectives, said Herb, the Forest Grove police captain. They described Spiering as withdrawn and upset, but he was lucid and mostly cooperative - and didn't seem as if he would hurt himself. His threat of suicide in the past was indirect, Herb said, and he hadn't made any further statements.

Serving restraining orders isn't something Forest Grove police typically do - most are served through the Washington County Sheriff's Office. Forest Grove officers receive no specific training for the task, but other types of general training, such as picking up on verbal and non-verbal cues from people, would apply, Herb said.

The department determined that the detectives should have followed the man into the bedroom when he went inside to change, Herb said.

"It's awkward and uncomfortable, but it's probably what could have been attempted in this case," Herb said.

Or they should have asked if they could quickly search the room to look for weapons, Herb said. Both actions would have been for their safety and Spiering's.

Right after the gunshot, Herb said, the detectives knew they should have been in the room. But they thought about Spiering's privacy more than the facts of the case and potential danger, he said.

The situation in the house for the detectives, Herb said, was extremely fluid. It's impossible to predict human behavior, he said, and unrealistic to expect that police won't ever make mistakes.

"This was a really awful outcome," Herb said. "We wish that it could have turned out differently."

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049; @rwoolington