HILLSBORO, Ore. — Liz Marshall will never forget the date: Dec. 11, 2019.
"That's the day," she said, recounting the day her son, Kevin Marshall, was shot and killed at a Hillsboro MAX Station platform.
Almost five years ago, Hillsboro Police were called out to a shooting in the parking lot of the Quatama MAX Station. Police learned one man had been shot and killed inside a car, later identified as Liz's son, Kevin.
"It's been hard because Kevin wasn't like a regular person. He was beyond what everybody... he cared for people," Liz said.
Liz said her son always wanted to make people laugh, loved being around people and was a second version of herself, which makes it all that much harder when police told her that her son had died.
Kevin was born in Puerto Rico in 1998. The family moved to Boston when he was young and later to Hillsboro during his teenage years. He attended middle and high school in Hillsboro and worked various jobs before his death in 2019.
"He was always keeping busy, at times working two jobs." Liz said.
The person that shot Kevin that night was 21-year-old Jason Bennekin, a person Liz and Kevin knew very well.
"We treated him as our own son. He celebrated holidays with us. He celebrated Christmas," she said.
Kevin and Jason were close friends, both sharing a love for music. Liz recalled a time that Kevin called her and asked if Jason could stay at their house for two weeks. She says that stay turned into two months.
"At the beginning, I thought he was a good kid. He was a good boy, then at some point, like two years before the event, I noticed Kevin was separating from him a little bit," Liz said.
Kevin and Jason had been friends for several years, but in the last couple of years of Kevin's life, Kevin had started to distance himself from Jason because Liz said he had made some inappropriate comments about their friends and family.
"He was not happy with Kevin separating himself from him, because they were very close, and then, Kevin tried to separate himself from him," Liz said.
Court documents said on the night of the shooting, Bennekin called police after the shooting, then approached police, saying he had shot Kevin in self-defense. Police detained Bennekin but later released him for an unknown reason.
"It was a nightmare," Liz said about the span of time it took police to make an arrest in the case. "I was scared, locking the houses, putting up cameras because he was out there."
Bennekin was arrested several months later in May of 2020. Prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. If convicted, the second-degree murder charge was an automatic 25 years to life sentence.
On Oct. 18, a Washington County jury found him not guilty on the second-degree murder charge but found him guilty on the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter.
On Oct. 28, a judge sentenced him to 75 months in prison to be served at the same time as a 60-month sentence for the unlawful use of a weapon charge.
"After seeing all the evidence, like no. This is clear: he murdered my son, and in two years, he's going to be out," Liz said.
And that scares her: "Two years and to think now how am I going to rearrange my life to protect my family because I don't feel protected. I don't."
As part of Bennekin's sentence, he was credited for time served, which means since his arrest in 2020 and his trial and sentencing in Oct. 2024, he had already served a majority of his 75-month sentence.
More Than A Number aims to help give a face and a voice to victims and families impacted by tragedies. If you or someone you know has been the victim of a homicide and would like to share your story, you can reach out to us by sending an email to morethananumber@kgw.com.