PORTLAND, Ore. — Editor's note: Information originally released from police said the two Argay Terrace shooting victims were father and son. They are uncle and nephew and the story has been edited to reflect that.
By Monday morning, a lone piece of yellow crime tape was all that was left following a deadly shooting near North Vancouver Avenue and Morgan Street in Portland on Sunday morning.
On Jan. 5, Portland police identified the victim as 35-year-old Isaiah Hurst.
The Piedmont neighborhood shooting was one of three shootings in Portland and one in Gresham in the first two days of the new year. In those five shootings, four people were killed and three were injured.
"That’s terrible," said Brendon Robar, who has lived in the Piedmont neighborhood for more than a decade. He said the shooting over the weekend was not the first since he moved in and in all likelihood won't be the last.
"It seems people are shooting each other because they’re in a thing together," Robar said. "Some deal going on that’s going wrong or whatever."
Detectives have yet to reveal a motive in the Piedmont neighborhood shooting or an earlier shooting in the Argay Terrace neighborhood where three people were shot just 90 minutes into 2022. One of the victims died at the scene. A second died at the hospital. The third is expected to survive.
Police identified the victims Monday as 43-year-old Andre Foster and his nephew, 21-year-old Quayan Foster, both from Portland.
The next day somebody was shot in the chest near Northwest 2nd Avenue and Couch Street. Authorities said the victim was alive and breathing on the way to the hospital.
"The arbitrary changing from one year to another isn't going to change the atmosphere in our city," said Lt. Nathan Sheppard of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).
Sheppard said he's disturbed by the deadly start to 2022 but isn't necessarily surprised because of what happened in 2021. There were more than 1,200 confirmed shootings in Portland in 2021, Sheppard said. Of those shootings, 386 people were injured by gunfire and 69 were killed.
"It's easy to get caught up in the numbers because they're so big but there's a story behind each of those," Sheppard said.
Sheppard said he hopes PPB's new Focused Intervention Team (FIT) will help quell the violence by responding to shooting scenes, assisting with investigations and trying to prevent gunfire. FIT's 12 officers and three sergeants are slated to start specialized training later this week. They'll hit the streets late next week.
"When they deploy on the 15th, shootings aren't going to instantly stop," Sheppard said. "This will be a process. It's going to be a process of building those relationships and eventually they'll make a difference. But we need to let the process move forward."
Back in the Piedmont neighborhood, Robar said he's hoping to see change sooner rather than later.
"People are stressed. There's a lot of fear going around. That's the worst thing for our society," Robar said.
It was a violent start to the year in Gresham, as well. According to investigators, a person was shot and killed Saturday afternoon at an apartment complex near Southeast 187th Avenue and Stark Street. No arrests have been made in that shooting or any of the three Portland shootings.
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