PORTLAND, Ore. — The lawyer for a man accused of shooting a Radio Cab taxi driver during a road rage incident on Interstate 205 argued in court Friday that the defendant's car backfired, leading him to be mistakenly identified as the shooter.
Bradley Dylan Stanwood, 47, is charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon for allegedly shooting the cab driver in the back near the Glisan exit on I-205 on Thursday morning, Sept. 1.
The victim remained hospitalized as of Friday morning.
Police said the victim drove himself to the hospital around 9 a.m. Thursday and called 911 while he was still en route. The victim provided a license plate number of vehicle description of the driver believed to be involved.
Officers identified the license plate as belonging to Stanwood's vehicle and arrested him later that morning near the intersection of Southeast 77th Avenue and Southeast Foster Road, police said.
A judge set his bail at $100,000.
"I think this is a case of misidentification. The car that he was driving, when you let off the accelerator, it backfires. I think he was mistaken for someone else," Stanwood's attorney Ted Martin said during his first court appearance Friday.
Martin said he's known Stanwood for more than a decade and they've spent a lot of time together. He said the defendant is a property owner and business owner with no criminal history.
He claimed that the defendant stopped at McDonald's on the morning of the shooting before going at work "completely normal, like nothing had happened — because nothing, according to him, had happened."
The attorney asked the judge to lower Stanwood's bail, saying "he's no more of a risk to harming a stranger than I am."
The judge said while Marin's arguments are important, he denied the request because those arguments do not qualify as evidence.
Stanwood's next court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 12.
