PORTLAND, Ore. — A man suspected in an August 2022 murder in North Portland and the later shooting of a witness to the crime is now behind bars, according to the Portland Police Bureau. Detectives working alongside U.S. Marshals captured 23-year-old Jacob Fitzgerald earlier this week.
The Portland Police Bureau put out a call to the public about Fitzgerald in late February, linking him to the 2022 murder and subsequent shooting.
According to previous police statements, officers responded to North Schmeer Road, just south of an Amazon warehouse and near the old Portland Meadows site, for a report of someone shot in the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 2022. They arrived to find a man later identified as Otis Abner, 53, dead at the scene.
While police have released few details about the investigation that followed, PPB said that Fitzgerald was involved in a shooting on Feb. 11, 2024, that injured a witness in the Abner murder case. The witness has not been publicly identified, and police have not elaborated on their condition.
On Feb. 23, a Multnomah County grand jury approved secret indictments of Fitzgerald for both Abner's murder and a laundry list of subsequent crimes, including the attempted murder of the witness. But Fitzgerald was not immediately taken into custody, and police put out their request for help from the public a few days later.
Court documents show that Fitzgerald is charged alongside a woman, Joanna Jean Fitzgerald, on the second indictment — the one not directly related to Abner's death. Joanna Fitzgerald was arrested shortly after the indictment was issued, and has since been allowed out of jail on supervised release pending trial.
On Monday, detectives from PPB's Homicide Unit, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit and the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force found Fitzgerald. The agency said that Fitzgerald had to be taken to the hospital "for treatment of an illness unrelated to his arrest."
The next day, police booked Fitzgerald into Multnomah County jail on charges of second-degree murder, three counts of unlawful use of a weapon, two counts of first-degree assault, hindering prosecution, two counts of second-degree attempted murder, first-degree attempted assault, two counts of menacing, felon in possession of a firearm, and four counts of first-degree burglary.
