Surveillance footage shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive shows three people on foot appear to fire repeatedly on a light-colored sedan in which police found three people dead Saturday.
The footage is the first indication of what led up to Portland’s deadliest shooting of 2023 so far.
The shooting occurred around 12:30 p.m. on North Foss Avenue in North Portland’s Portsmouth neighborhood near University Park, the Charles Jordan Community Center and Rosa Parks Elementary School.
The doorbell camera footage shows three people walking on the sidewalk with their hands in their pockets in broad daylight as one car passes. When a light-colored sedan rolls by next, the three pedestrians — it’s not clear how old they are or whether they’re male or female — begin firing. They run after the car, still firing.
The sedan then crashes into a parked SUV and spins to a stop as the three people appear to continue to fire. It’s not clear from the footage what happens next or whether anyone inside the car fired back. The sedan slides backwards out of the frame, and the footage doesn’t capture where the three shooters go. The footage recorded the sound of about three dozen shots.
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Three dead in ‘shocking’ daylight shooting in North Portland
Hours after the shooting, a light-colored Kia sedan still sat in the middle of the street cordoned off by red police tape. A Jeep with front-end damage sat next to it.
Not since June 2021, when four people died in a single incident, has Portland’s gun violence claimed so many lives at once. Police Chief Chuck Lovell, in a statement Saturday, called the latest deaths a “shocking incident.”
“This shooting in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood is another tragic example of how gun violence can affect our community terribly,” he said.
As of Saturday, police said they had made no arrests.
The killings were the 15th, 16th and 17th suspected homicides in Portland so far in 2023. As of this time last year, Portland had recorded 24 homicides on its way to a record of 101 in 2022.
On Sunday, a makeshift memorial of flowers, balloons and a cross made out of sticks decorated the base of a tree on North Foss Avenue. Debris from the crash still littered the road.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to contact detective Jason Koenig at Jason.Koenig@police.portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-0889 or detective William Winters at William.Winters@police.portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-0466, referencing case number 23-77440.
– Austin De Dios; adedios@oregonian.com; @austindedios; 503-319-9744
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