One Person Fatally Shot During Portland Protest Of Amir Locke’s Death
A Saturday (Feb. 19) shooting in Portland, Ore. left one person dead and five others wounded during a protest against police killings, WFXR reports.
Authorities said an unidentified woman was fatally shot and two men along with three other women were taken to a local hospital where their conditions were unknown.
According to OPB.org, the shooting happened near Normandale Park, where demonstrators planned on social media to gather for an event to demand justice for Amir Locke. On Feb. 2, police in Minneapolis fatally shot Locke, a 22-year-old Black man, in a botched no-knock police raid.
The Portland shooting began with a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters, the Portland Police Bureau said.
Demonstrators at the scene told OPB that a person came out of a house and confronted the protesters. That person shot into the crowd.
“I heard a really rapidly escalating argument with obscenities and a woman’s voice yelling at somebody,” Mike Macrae, who in his home near the shooting, told OPB. “And then I heard a man say, ‘Don’t bring this blank to our neighborhood.’ And then shots. Like a whole bunch close together.”
Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler tweeted a promise of transparency in the investigation.
“While many of the details of last night’s shooting near Normandale Park are unclear, we do know one thing for sure: Our community is dealing with the sadness of another senseless act of gun violence,” he said in a separate Twitter post.
The shooting happened just one day after Kim Potter, the former suburban Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in the 2021 shooting death of Daunte Wright, was given a two-year sentence in a Minneapolis courtroom. Many activists called the sentence a mere slap on the wrist that illustrates the undervaluing of Black lives.
After a SWAT team killed Locke, a weekend of angry but peaceful protests erupted in Minneapolis, in which thousands of people took to the streets to demand justice. A graphic and brief body camera video shows Locke was shot within 10 seconds by officers. MPD Interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman confirmed that Locke was not named in the original warrant.
