PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland mother is asking for help in finding the man she says assaulted herself and her two children. Police confirmed that they are looking for a man who yelled racial slurs and spit on two children who were walking in Southeast Portland at the end of December.
"Unfortunately, racism is real," Kanika Callier told KGW. To her, that painful truth has never felt more real than it does now. "I don't get why your child cannot walk down the street — and their skin is not a threat."
Callier and her children are Black. She was at work near Southeast 17th and Burnside on Dec. 29 when she let her 16-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son walk down to Starbucks to get a snack.
Not long after they'd left, the kids called her, frantic. They took video as they called Callier to tell her what had just happened.
"Mom?" her daughter says on the video. "Some homeless man is not well and he just spit on me and (her brother) and said that he hates our kind."
"Once your life is shaken like that, how do you put the pieces back together?" Callier asked.
In that moment, Callier ran out the door to meet her kids. By then, she said, the man had crossed the street to a bus stop. But she said that changed when he saw her coming.
"The gentleman got up from the bus stop and started speed-walking, sprint-walking towards us," Callier said.
The man took a cup of an unknown liquid and threw it on her and the kids, she said.
"We were drenched in it," Callier recalled. "So, at that moment I just sort of blacked out, I saw red, I dropped my phone, my keys in my hand and I punched him in his face a couple of times."
The next moments were again captured on video by Callier's kids.
"Don't you ever spit on my kids again or throw anything at me ... I will kill you!" Callier can be heard shouting on the video. "You can pick on an adult but don't you ever—!"
Phoebe Lombard works in the neighborhood. She said her heart goes out to Callier and her family.
"To see what happened it was just ... a lot," Lombard said. "You hear about these things happening, but to physically see it and to physically see hate happening right in front of you ... it hurts."
According to the Portland Police Bureau, officers responded to reports of a disturbance near East Burnside Street and Southeast 28th Avenue just before 2:30 p.m. on De. 29. They said that a 16-year-old girl told them that she'd been with her 11-year-old brother when a man approached and made "bias-based statements."
The man yelled racial slurs at both of the children and spit on the teenage girl, they told police, following the teen when she tried to walk away.
PPB said that officers looked for the suspect, who had walked off after the incident. He was not located near the scene.
"I'm very concerned that he's still free and walking around, so it's like ... who else's family is now at stake?" Callier said.
Police confirmed that neither of the children were injured, but began investigating the incident as a potential bias crime "as the suspect subjected the victims to offensive physical contact based on the suspect’s perception of the victims’ race."
Oregon's bias crime statutes cover what are more broadly known as hate crimes. There are two potential charges for bias incidents, one misdemeanor and one felony — the latter reserved for cases where the suspect caused physical injury or put someone in fear of imminent serious physical injury. "Offensive physical contact" falls under the misdemeanor charge, second-degree bias crime.
The suspect is described as a white man in his 40s or 50s, about 5-foot 10-inches tall, skinny and balding, with sandy blonde hair and beard.
Anyone with information about this incident or who knows the identity or location of this suspect is asked to e-mail crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov attn: Bias Crimes Unit and reference case number 23-334800.