After an unidentified man is shot during a traffic stop in North Portland, his body is left for hours inside the car.
Su-Jin Yim, The Oregonian
A police officer shot and killed a motorist Sunday in a North Portland parking lot after a routine traffic stop, authorities said.
The body of the man, whose identity was not released by police, remained inside a white sedan for several hours in front of the Lucky Dry Cleaners and Laundry on North Fessenden Street, near Burr Avenue. He was alone in the car.
A patrol car with two officers stopped the white Mitsubishi just after 5 p.m. for a routine traffic violation, said Sgt. Cheryl Robinson, a Portland Police Bureau spokeswoman. The vehicle pulled into a common parking lot for City Food Mart and a strip of stores, including the dry cleaners.
Soon after, one of the officers fired “multiple shots” into the car, she said. She refused to say what prompted the officer to fire or whether the man had a gun.
Robinson said police would release more information on the shooting and identify the officers today.
Police Chief Derrick Foxworth arrived soon after the shooting, but was unavailable for comment. Robert King, president of the Portland Police Association, which represents police officers, also arrived and declined to comment.
Police cordoned off the block and interviewed people who were in stores adjacent to the laundromat. A large crowd of people gathered, many of them demanding to know why the man was shot.
Some complained that he was an unarmed African American shot by police in North Portland, and compared it to May’s fatal police shooting of Kendra James, who was trying to flee a routine traffic stop.
“It seems like we’re moving to a time where we’re turning a stop into a killing,” said Robert Richardson, an elder at Emmanuel Temple in Northeast Portland.
In the past 10 months, five people have died during confrontations with Portland police, including Sunday’s shooting.
Three of the previous four were fatally shot by police, while another shot himself after a gunbattle with officers.
The previous four shootings were ruled justifiable by the police bureau, and no criminal indictments were issued by Multnomah County grand juries.
Those shootings were:
Jan. 3 -- Central Precinct Officer Brian Hubbard fatally shot Jose Angel Padilla of Yakima, who was threatening his girlfriend with a knife at Portland’s main bus terminal. Witnesses alerted police that the woman was on her knees and the man was holding her by the hair with a knife to her throat. Five Central Precinct officers saw Padilla in the bus waiting area with his hands around the woman’s throat, but they didn’t see a knife. As they yelled at him, Padilla displayed the knife clearly to the officers and put it back beneath the woman’s neck. Hubbard fired a single shot from about 25 feet away using an AR-15 rifle, striking Padilla once. Padilla, 22, died from a single head wound, an autopsy found. The woman, Anaisa Valdez Arroyo, 21, of Yakima, suffered a slight cut to her throat.
Dec. 24 -- Two East Precinct officers and a robbery sergeant fatally shot robbery suspect Shane Eric Clements as he tried to escape in a stolen car. Clements foiled a stakeout, but police cornered him in a senior citizens mobile home park in Southeast Portland. Despite its being pinned by two police vehicles, Clements backed up the stolen car, ramming into one police vehicle and veered toward the two officers. The officers fired 24 shots into the stolen car. Clements, 25, was shot in the head, neck and back and was found dead, slumped across the front seat of the car. He had no gun. In finding no criminal wrongdoing, grand jurors said the officers did a good job in a difficult and dangerous situation.
Oct. 21 -- After a gunbattle with police, Eddie Homsombath, 19, died of a self-inflicted .45-caliber gunshot to the head. During a traffic stop, Homsombath pointed a gun in an officer’s face, fumbled with the safety lock, then fired a few shots before speeding off. The officer, Jeffrey Bell, fired six shots into the car as Homsombath sped away. After a nearly three-mile chase, the vehicle crashed into a pole. One of Bell’s bullets flew through the driver’s seat headrest, missing a passenger lying across the back seat, and struck Homsombath in the back. An autopsy determined that the officer’s bullet was not the fatal wound.
May 5 -- Officer Scott McCollister fatally shot Kendra James, 21, as she tried to drive away from a traffic stop on North Skidmore Street. McCollister told investigators that 80 percent of his body was in the car, trying to get her out, when she put the car into drive. He said he fired one shot from his 9 mm handgun because he feared for his life. The bullet struck James above her left hip and lodged under her right breast. James, who had cocaine in her blood, had a warrant for her arrest for failing to appear in court on an attempted drug-possession charge. Former Chief Mark Kroeker suspended McCollister without pay for 51/2 months, saying that although the shooting was justified, McCollister should not have put himself in a position in which he had to unholster and fire his gun.