Residents are reeling after a Saturday night shooting at the Wimbledon Square apartments in Southeast Portland left a woman dead in the complex’s parking lot.
A resident whose apartment overlooks the crime scene said he recognized the woman as one of his neighbors and provided a photo showing her body lying in the parking lot off Southeast Colt Drive in the Reed neighborhood.
Sunday morning, a white SUV with a bullet strike and a mound of red camellia petals strewn in the rain marked the spot near where the woman appears to have died.
The man said he heard five to eight shots ring out, then another tenant began crying “he killed her, he killed her!” as tires screeched off into the night. “It woke me up out of a dead sleep,” said the resident, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons.
In a statement, police said they responded to the area about 11:25 p.m. and had made no immediate arrests. They did not identify the woman killed.
The resident said responding officers later forced their way inside an apartment where the woman lived with two young children, a dog and an iguana. The unit he identified had a missing doorbell camera and a busted lock Sunday morning.
A strand of crime scene tape remained at the entrance to the Wimbledon Square apartments off Southeast Colt Drive on Sunday, April 16, 2023.Zane Sparling/The Oregonian
He said officers at the scene told him the woman had been shot multiple times at short range.
“There was a lot of arguing going on (at that unit), a lot of dissension,” he said. “It was obviously personal.”
Another resident, who identified himself only as CJ, said he saw two ambulances and at least 15 officers in the same parking lot, putting up crime tape and appearing to collect shell casings.
“It’s sketchy… This kind of thing is happening quite a bit,” he said, recalling the fatal police shooting of an armed robbery suspect in the neighborhood in November.
The woman’s death marks the city’s 23rd homicide so far this year. There were 31 homicides at this time last year, part of a record-breaking 101 killings.
— Zane Sparling; zsparling@oregonian.com; 503-319-7083; @pdxzane
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