Richard Vanderhoek acknowledged firing the bow from the start, leaving jurors to decide whether killing David Collins Sr. was legally justified.
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Richard “Cole” Vanderhoek did not leave investigators searching for the person who fired the fatal shot at David Collins Sr.; he called 911 himself and reported the shooting. More than two years later, a Clark County jury decided what that admission did not answer, finding the killing was second-degree murder rather than self-defense.
The path from emergency call to conviction made the case less a mystery about who caused Collins’ death than a legal dispute over why the shooting happened and whether the circumstances excused it. Vanderhoek had visible injuries after the initial fight and said Collins assaulted him. An eyewitness, however, described Collins walking away, Vanderhoek following him in a vehicle and a later confrontation near a chain-link fence. Prosecutors used that sequence to argue Vanderhoek was no longer responding to an immediate attack when he fired. The defense asked jurors to view the shot as the culmination of a violent encounter in which Vanderhoek feared for himself.
The first official record began at approximately 6:44 a.m. April 2, 2024. According to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, a man called 911 from the 3200 block of Northeast Petticoat Lane and said he had shot another man with a bow and arrow after an altercation. Deputies arrived and found the victim dead in a driveway. The caller was Vanderhoek. He gave investigators the victim’s first name and referred to him as an acquaintance. That early description established a connection between the two but did not define the nature or history of their relationship, and subsequent public reporting reviewed for this account does not establish a closer one.
The homicide investigation quickly acquired a more complicated evidentiary record. Deputies observed injuries on Vanderhoek, including a visible mark on his face and scrapes reported on his chest and elbow. He repeatedly asked officers to photograph them. Vanderhoek said Collins had assaulted him and told deputies that he had ordered Collins to stop. The sheriff’s office sent Vanderhoek to a hospital for apparent minor injuries before investigators arrested him on suspicion of second-degree murder. From the outset, then, the state possessed both Vanderhoek’s acknowledgment of firing the bow and physical evidence consistent with his assertion that a fight had taken place.
What moved the case beyond a simple account of mutual combat was the witness chronology. Investigators were told the men had been fighting near the residence at about 6:05 a.m. Collins then walked away. The witness said the other man appeared to follow in a vehicle. Authorities reported that the two later returned and another altercation occurred. Reports based on the probable-cause declaration added that Collins was on one side of a chain-link fence during the later encounter while Vanderhoek was on the other side with the bow. The witness heard a thump and then saw Collins with the fatal injury.
The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office later identified Collins as David Joseph Collins Sr., 42, and classified his death as a homicide caused by the arrow wound. That determination established the medical cause and manner of death but did not decide the criminal case. Homicide as a medical classification does not itself determine whether a killing is murder, manslaughter or legally justified. That distinction became especially important because Vanderhoek was not denying that he fired the shot. His defense was instead asking the criminal justice system to find that his use of deadly force was lawful under the circumstances.
The prosecution’s contrary theory appeared publicly at Vanderhoek’s first court appearance. Prosecuting attorney Luka Vitasovic argued that Vanderhoek had essentially “hunted down” Collins, describing aggressive driving and engine revving after the earlier confrontation had dissipated. A judge set bail at $2 million. Vanderhoek pleaded not guilty and remained entitled to the presumption of innocence as the case moved through Clark County Superior Court. The prosecution’s language was forceful, but at that stage it remained an allegation and legal argument. Only a jury at trial could decide whether the state had proved the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt.
By the time that trial arrived in September 2026, the courtroom dispute had narrowed around self-defense. The defense could point to Vanderhoek’s injuries, the undisputed existence of a physical confrontation and his contemporaneous statements that Collins had assaulted him. Prosecutors could point to the eyewitness account that Collins walked away, the vehicle that followed him and the separation between the men during the later confrontation. The jury therefore had to evaluate not merely who started a fight or whether Vanderhoek had been hurt, but whether the threat he said he faced justified deadly force at the particular moment the bow was fired.
The verdict showed how jurors resolved that question. Vanderhoek was found guilty of second-degree murder. The decision rejected self-defense as a lawful explanation for the shooting and established his criminal responsibility for Collins’ death. It also marked the end of a long period in which the most significant facts were framed as allegations. The witness’s account of the separated encounters, Vanderhoek’s injuries, the fence and the defendant’s own statements were no longer merely pieces of a probable-cause showing; they had been tested in a trial that ended with a conviction.
The case also demonstrates the different functions performed by each stage of a homicide prosecution. Deputies established the immediate scene and obtained statements. The medical examiner determined who died and how. Prosecutors charged an offense and advanced a theory about the defendant’s conduct. Defense counsel challenged that theory and argued justification. A judge supervised the proceedings, while jurors made the factual decision about guilt. None of those roles was interchangeable. The early medical ruling of homicide did not itself prove murder, just as Vanderhoek’s documented injuries did not themselves prove self-defense.
Outside that procedural framework stood Collins’ family. His sister, Sabrina Meyer, later remembered him as the older brother who kept in contact, remembered family occasions and enjoyed making relatives laugh. She spoke about a voicemail her daughter had saved from a birthday, in which Collins sang in an exaggerated high voice. The memory supplied no evidence about the confrontation and had no bearing on the legal test for self-defense. Its relevance was different: it restored some individuality to a man whose name otherwise appears repeatedly beside terms such as victim, homicide, probable cause and second-degree murder.
The public record also leaves boundaries that should not be filled with assumptions. The available reports do not establish a detailed motive for the original argument. They do not support describing Collins and Vanderhoek as close friends. They document a fight and later fatal confrontation but do not provide a complete transcript of every exchange between the men. The jury’s verdict means the state proved second-degree murder to the jurors’ satisfaction; it does not authorize adding motives or circumstances that were never established. Those limits are especially important in a case whose unusual weapon and eyewitness details can invite speculation beyond the evidence.
Following the verdict, sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 30. Searches of the available public reporting and Clark County court material for this Nov. 7 update did not produce a reliable account sufficient to state the outcome of that scheduled proceeding as fact. The latest development that can be confirmed from the reviewed material is therefore the jury’s second-degree murder conviction, the legal endpoint of a trial that began with an admitted shooting but required more than two years to resolve whether it was criminal.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 7, 2026.