A 21-year-old Portland man pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Thursday, a day after he allegedly shot and killed two men in a Southwest Portland parking lot.
Portland police have not yet publicly identified the two men who died.
In addition to the two counts of first-degree murder, Jobanpreet Singh pleaded not guilty to four counts of unlawful use of a weapon. He is being held without bail at the Multnomah County Detention Center and is scheduled to be indicted May 12, court records show.
Officers arrested Singh after finding the two men dead in the parking lot of Barbur Square, a strip mall off Southwest Barbur Boulevard and Primrose Street, shortly after 2:45 p.m. Wednesday.
Singh was arrested at the scene.
The bodies of the two men lay dead on the pavement behind a black car parked in front of Bentoz Teriyaki and JJ’s Caffe. The shooting was reported when the parking lot was full of cars and people patronizing the restaurants, a tattoo parlor and several other shops in the mall.
Witnesses reported hearing an argument and then between six and 10 gunshots. One woman was in her car with her young child when the shots rang out.
Kayia Murrell said she was on a break from work and waiting for her chicken teriyaki order at Bentoz Teriyaki when two women frantically tried to get inside the restaurant. Murell said she held the door open for the women and saw a group of young men “getting into a fight or scuffle” outside the restaurant.
“One man got into another person’s face,” she said. “The shooter pulled out his gun and the two young men ran.”
Murrell said she heard six to eight gunshots.
Employees at the restaurant rushed customers to the back and locked the doors, she said.
Murrell said she didn’t know what the men were arguing about. The two men who were shot did not appear to be armed, she said.
“It is a shocking experience,” she said. “It’s wild how quickly a life can be taken away.”
Southwest Barbur Boulevard between 30th Avenue and Alice was closed to traffic for several hours for the investigation, police said.
The killings brought the city’s homicide toll to 30 so far this year, compared with 35 at this time last year.
Several hours before the Southwest Portland shooting, a 4-year-old boy died at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center after being rushed there with “significant trauma,” police said. Officers arrested the child’s father, 19-year-old Marquavious D. Ware, who pleaded not guilty on Thursday to second-degree murder and first-degree criminal mistreatment in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
The three deaths on Wednesday follow on the heels of back-to-back shootings in the past week that left two people dead.
Last Friday night, a man was found slumped over the steering wheel of a car in Northwest Portland and another man died after being shot Sunday morning in Southeast Portland. A third man was also shot over the weekend. However, it’s unclear how he died. Police said Thursday it was not by homicide.
Police asked anyone with information to contact detectives Tony Harris at tony.harris@police.portlandoregon.gov, 503-823-0441, or Brad Clifton at Brad.Clifton@police.portalndoregon.gov, 503-823-0696, and reference case No. 23-115074.
— Catalina Gaitán, cgaitan@oregonian.com, @catalingaitan_
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